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Brief Description:

To help link patients and their health care providers in the event of a national or natural disaster, the National Cancer Institute and the American Society of Clinical Oncology have developed a Disaster Response Wallet Card.

Transcript:

Akinso: To help link patients and their health care providers in the event of a national or natural disaster, the National Cancer Institute and the American Society of Clinical Oncology have developed a Disaster Response Wallet Card. Cancer patients in the Gulf Coast states may find themselves evacuated from their homes and without access to their physicians or medical records during the hurricane season. The wallet card is designed to serve as an aid to displaced patients seeking continued cancer treatment. Ms. Madeline La Porta, Associate Director of the NCI's Office of Partnerships and Dissemination Initiatives, describes the wallet card.

La Porta: The front of the card basically has the cancer information service number-the 1-800-4-cancer number as well as the cancer.gov NCI website. And then it has the ASCO patient website. So people can use the front of the card to know where to look for information to reconnect with their physician. And then the back of the card has a space for their name, their diagnosis, what the name of their treating physician is, and what treatment regimen they're on.

Akinso: Ms. La Porta talks about the benefits of having a card in case of a hurricane.

La Porta: If a person is evacuated who's in the midst of chemotherapy, say for colon cancer, they will know what type of cancer they have, the stage of the cancer, and the drugs that they're on. And that way if they can't connect to their physician they can still go to another cancer center or physician and continue their treatment.

Akinso: The wallet card will be distributed as part of a pilot program during the hurricane season, which runs from June through November. To order a wallet card, call 1-800-4-cancer. This is Wally Akinso at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda Maryland.