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12 May 2021

Distributed Leadership Summit - five year plan for improving cancer outcomes

  • VCCC Alliance

The VCCC alliance is making a substantial investment to speed up the pace of the implementation of research evidence into practice in order to improve outcomes for Victorians affected by cancer.

A decade ago, it was reported that it took an average of 17 years to bring implementation research to the clinic. Now, in a world changed by COVID, this lag seems a mighty long time.

At VCCC’s Distributed Leadership Summit last month, leaders shared the strategic roadmaps that have been developed for all major cancers, cancer nursing, primary care and regional and rural initiatives, and talked about the initiatives they will undertake to transform their field over the next five years.

As part of VCCC’s 2021-24 investment:

  • Twenty senior cancer clinician researchers (Distributed Leadership) from VCCC member organisations will work strategically and collaboratively across multiple institutions
  • Funds have been allocated to support the collection, mapping and evaluation of critical data from disease-related registries, clinical datasets and patient-reported outcomes data
  • New education initiatives that address an important evidence gap and that will upskill the cancer workforce will be funded as part of the implementation of the strategic roadmaps
  • Three dedicated VCCC Program Managers will work with the Distributed Leadership to support the implementation of their roadmaps, evaluate cancer tumour stream and cancer-themed projects and activities and identify opportunities for leveraged opportunities
  • A new implementation science resource will be funded within a VCCC alliance member organisation and will be incorporated into the program team this year.

Strategic roadmaps identify key challenges and outline opportunities to change practice

The Distributed Leadership strategic roadmaps identified the key priorities in education, research, leadership, knowledge translation and advocacy over the next five years.

“We are setting a high bar in the brain cancer space,” said Professor Hui Gan, VCCC Research & Education (R&E) Lead for Brain Cancer.

“It is a challenging area with slow progress but there are immediate opportunities to bring about some rapid progress, for example, in improving access to clinical trials.”

“Researchers and clinicians require a way to share information on the skills and techniques needed to apply cutting-edge research to the clinical setting,” said Professor Bruce Mann, R&E Lead Breast Cancer. 

Regional Oncology Leads, Associate Professor Ian Collins, and Dr Craig Underhill highlighted the need to cast a regional lens across all programs of the VCCC. Dr Underhill is heading up an $18.6 million grant to bridge the metro-regional trials gap by 2025 and there are synergies and leveraged opportunities with many VCCC alliance programs.

At the summit, Jill Francis, Professor of Implementation Science, Melbourne School of Health Sciences and Professor of Health Services Research at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre highlighted four kinds of care gaps: being slow to adopt new ways or technologies; hanging onto old interventions that no longer work; failure to keep up with gradually emerging evidence, and failure to keep up with changes in the ethos of care… such as person-centred care. Professor Francis said care is not all about innovation but also about ensuring the evidence is implemented in a way that maximally impacts patients in the real world.

VCCC Executive Director, Professor Grant McArthur, thanked the Distributed Leadership for the opportunity to meet and discuss targets. “This kind of multifaceted strategic focus is relatively new.”

“One of the key success factors will be to see an improvement in outcomes in low-survival cancers particularly pancreatic, lung and brain cancer.”

Professor McArthur applauded the collaborative research initiatives of the Medical Research Futures Fund and thanked Megan Astle, Associate Director, MRFF and Major Initiatives from the University of Melbourne for sharing forthcoming opportunities including the NHMRC Clinical Trial and Cohort Study grant and the NHMRC Development grants. 

More information on the VCCC distributed leadership model and its role in the Strategic Program Plan 2021-2024 will be published in the second half of this year.

For more information, contact Dr Jasper de Boer Program Manager, Distributed Leadership or Dr Mark Buzza, VCCC Head of Research.

Image: Professor Jill Francis at the VCCC alliance Distributed Leadership Summit

 

 

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