With the threat of a government shutdown averted for the short term, the annual meeting of the Association of VA Hematology and Oncology (AVAHO) kicks off Friday, October 2, in Washington, DC. The meeting will bring together nearly 400 pharmacists, physicians, social workers, nurses, and other health care providers.
The meeting will include sessions on the financial impact of precision medicine, maintaining wellness for survivors, concurrent cognitive and emotional challenges, the role of precision medicine in clinical trial design at the VHA, and having difficult conversations with patients. The complete agenda can be found at http://www.avaho.org/conference-program.html.
The focus of the meeting will be on personalized medicine, according to current AVAHO President Joao Ascensao, MD, PhD. “We don’t treat cancer, we treat people with cancer,” he explained. “We can bring different disciplines together for the best cancer care possible.”
According to Dr. Ascensao, the meeting is about more than attending the sessions. “There are a number of reasons for people to get more involved,” he said. “The bigger the organization the more that we can do. I’d like to see AVAHO move from an association that has a major conference to an association that provides all kinds of education offerings for its members and gets involved in education, prevention, and treatment so that the society can have a bigger impact in the care of cancer at the VA.”