Hematology and oncology specialist Cesar Rodriguez, MD, shares his advice on how doctors and people with multiple myeloma (MM) can have a better relationship during treatment, and makes his MM Promise to help patients experiencing health disparities.
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Presents: Changemakers in multiple myeloma
Cesar: I'm Cesar Rodriguez, and I'm a hematologist and oncologist. I feel that TMW Campaign is a way of setting the grounds. It's educating patients, empowering them, and giving them resources to know what myeloma is and things that they have access to. And that's the basic low-hanging fruit that we have so that we can then grow from there and make a bigger impact.
[Super] That’s My Word® is fighting multiple myeloma (MM) with a simple promise…a promise to get the facts and be a champion for change.
Cesar: Trying to empower the patient, and not just the patient, but also for the healthcare professionals. This is just the building blocks of something that can happen, it's going to build into something bigger as we go.
Cesar: So some things that we can do to help close the gap with disparities, especially with the Black community, is that there's many things, but some basic things that we can do is one, be conscious about the difference in culture between different races, different ethnicities. Another thing is not to race things when you're having a patient visit. Take your time, try to build trust, build a rapport with that patient and the family so you can build this connection as if you were part of that family, because that'll build trust and that'll get them to do more likely what you want them to do for their health care.
[Super] Studies show that Black people have better treatment results when given equal access to care.
Cesar: My Multiple Myeloma Promise is to help therapies get to where they need to be. Either educate the communities that need it the most about what it is and their access to it, but at the same time try to find ways if for some reason they cannot access them, find ways so that we can provide those therapies to those patients.
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Make your promise to spread the word.
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