The Colorado Cancer Screening Program (CCSP) for Patient Navigation is working with the safety net clinics throughout Colorado to help respond to the coronavirus and COVID-19.
“We are responding to the urgent request from our clinics, community partners and state agencies, indicating navigators need support to best serve clients in the front line and to help support patients with acute chronic conditions” says Andrea (Andi) Dwyer, Director of CCSP.
Within the CCSP program, feedback from the clinics note that their navigators have had to turn their efforts to working with COVID-19 as the priority.
“The cancer prevention aspect is not lost as the navigators and clinics, as we work on sharing the importance of rescheduling colonoscopies and if patients have signs and symptoms, they still need to be seen urgently, but we need to support the dire needs of our partners and their patients,” says Dwyer.
Working with Dr. Patricia Valverde, the Primary Investigator (PI) of the Patient Navigator Training Collaborative (PNTC) and the statewide Alliance for Community Health Workers and Patient Navigators, Dwyer and the teams are helping inform the development of supports such as telephone scripts, workflow and assessment tools, technical support and education modules and sessions to better support navigators who are now adapting their positions to work in remote settings, on the front lines and in a much different context.
“Having the expertise and input from clinicians, programs partners, bio-ethic professionals and policy experts is helping us create the best support for our Colorado navigators,” says Valverde.
