At Virginia Commonwealth University’s (VCU) Massey Cancer Center, we make it our responsibility to provide the best possible care to our patients. We are one of only two designated cancer centers in the state of Virginia and take pride in providing care to both our immediate community and anyone that walks through our doors seeking help.
This commitment to patients includes a constant effort to improve our research capabilities. That’s why in early 2019 we created the Together for Health – Virginia program, an innovative digital health research initiative that leveraged funding from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to study the social, behavioral, and environmental factors in our area that may lead to cancer.
Our goal was to survey current and past cancer patients as well as interested volunteers. We mailed a paper-based, 240-question, seven-part survey to all interested parties across a 62-county area that encompassed most of the state of Virginia.
As my fellow researchers surely know, it was a struggle to get sufficient participation with a survey of this magnitude. We knew we needed to modernize our methods and go digital.
Read more at Health IT Answers.
