Joseph Mikhael, MD, Chief Medical Officer at the International Myeloma Foundation talks about the M-POWER program.
Transcription:
At the International Myeloma Foundation, it’s a privilege for me to work there, one of the greatest endeavors and initiatives that I have the privilege of leading is what we call the M-Power Program. It’s a bit of a play on words. The capital M stands for Myeloma and Power is designed to empower patients and communities to change the course of myeloma. This is our initiative that is dedicated to health disparity in myeloma.
Myeloma of all cancers is actually the most disparate when it comes to survival within the African-American population. For those of us who are African-American, we’re twice as high risk of getting multiple myeloma. But perhaps more worrisome today that mortality is twice as high in the Black population than in the white population. Meaning a black man or woman diagnosed today with myeloma will be expected to live half as long as a white man or white woman of the same age with multiple myeloma.
This M-Power program is built to try and help solve that problem, knowing that no one can fix it overnight. This has drivers that are deeply embedded and everything from systemic racism to the health care system to social determinants of health.
But we’ve proposed to try and approach this with three simple approaches or three combined approaches. One, to engage the community, deep community engagement to raise awareness and understanding of this condition and its impact. People can know the signs and symptoms so that we can catch the disease earlier.
Two, to educate the primary care world. One of the greatest disparities in myeloma, particularly within the African-American population and indeed the Hispanic population, is the delayed diagnosis because patients don’t come out of the sign on their head that says they have myeloma. Most patients have a delay in diagnosis, but that delay is even longer within the African-American community. It has a lot to do with confounding diseases like diabetes and indeed access to primary care.
Thirdly and lastly, to enhance the care that is given by the myeloma community to patients, meaning that we understand culturally sensitive care better, that we appreciate the importance of diversity in clinical trials that we understand the scope of the problem and react in a way that can help reduce the burden.
Among all the activities of the IMF, this is one that I’m particularly excited about and thankful for. We’ve recently had a program, for example, where we have engaged 12 minority medical students, many from historical Black colleges and universities, and paired them with a myeloma expert to do a project in health disparities and then had them all present them as posters at the annual National Medical Association meeting.
We believe that these approaches in the short term and the long term can be a step in the road to reducing health inequities in multiple myeloma.
To learn more about the M-POWER program, visit www.myeloma.org/videos/international-myeloma-foundations-m-power-project
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