Coombs receives 2-year developmental Lineberger grant

Lorinda Coombs, PhD, FNP-BC, an Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing and an Associate Member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center received a 2-year $90,000 grant from Spring 2022 Developmental Awards. Co-investigators include Dr. Ashley Bryant from the SON, Dr. Erin Kent from Gillings School of Public Health and Drs. Emily Ray and Daniel Reuland from School of Medicine. The research award will support the development of a values assessment tool for women with metastatic breast cancer and their caregivers.

More than 400,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in the U.S. each year; it is the second leading cause of cancer deaths for women in North Carolina. Metastatic breast cancer has numerous treatment options with an average survival of 2-3 years and can involve multiple treatment decisions over the care continuum. Patients and families often have different perspectives from their oncology clinician when making treatment decisions, suggesting the importance of a systematic elicitation of values of patients and their families to ensure value-aligned treatment decisions. There is no standardized approach to values assessment in mBC, a significant gap in patient-centered clinical practice. The goal of this proposed research is to develop, adapt and test a new tool developed from existing tools and stakeholder input—the Values Assessment Tool (VAST), designed to facilitate communication and shared decision-making for women with mBC and their caregivers.