Priority 3: Diagnosis and Treatment

Comprehensive, prompt, and accessible cancer treatment and care is essential to increasing survivorship and better health outcomes after diagnosis. However, in Massachusetts, disparities remain in cancer treatment and mortality rates among residents, particularly for Black non-Hispanic men and women. In this stage of the cancer continuum, strategies are needed to ensure equity in access to timely and high-quality treatment. To help achieve equitable access to cancer care, the Cancer Plan incorporates strategies that focus on ensuring timely treatment by appropriate specialists, training and continuing education opportunities for medical providers, increasing access to clinical trials, coordinated and accountable models of care, patient navigation, patient-centered care, and supporting shared decision-making.

Diagnosis and Treatment Goal: Ensure that all people in Massachusetts receive fair and equitable cancer care through timely and high-quality diagnosis and treatment without systemic social and structural barriers.

Objective 1: Establish and foster 6 regional collaborations between cancer care organizations and community-based organizations to address barriers to equitable cancer care by 2029.

Objective 2: Utilize existing resources and data to identify and address variations in standards of cancer care across the state by 2024.

Objective 3: Increase utilization of financial resources by priority populations to address cost-related barriers to care by 2029.

Objective 4: Increase community health workers’, patient navigators’, and social workers’ capacity (skills and number) to provide cancer care coordination services by 2029.