People living with lung cancer report perceiving stigma around their diagnosis—and interactions with their healthcare providers are reported as a common source. Healthcare providers can use skills training to communicate better, reduce stigma/distress, and provide support.

GO2 for Lung Cancer is collaborating with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) to develop empathetic communication training to teach physicians how to better communicate without using stigmatizing language.

This project is expanding its scope and will be tested nationwide across 16 sites, including 8 GO2 for Lung Cancer Centers of Excellence. Oncology providers at participating sites will receive empathetic communication training and evaluate its impact on their communication and empathy skills. Patients may be selected to share their perception of stigma and care satisfaction after the training. This combination of patient and provider-focused data will help to drive progress in de-stigmatizing lung cancer. and smoking cessation.

If your center is interested in potentially participating as a field site, please contact GO2’s research team at research@go2.org to learn more about the study.

GO2 helped conduct interviews with those living with lung cancer to help researchers learn more about patient experiences. GO2 contributed to a scientific publication and poster presented at ASCO 2023, based on the training module pilot test and our Center of Excellence network to expand testing nationwide.

This study is funded by National Cancer Institute R01 Grant #1R01CA255522-01A1 to PIs Dr. Smita Banerjee and Dr. Jamie Ostroff.