People who identify as LGBTQ2+ have a disproportionate cancer burden. Many are hesitant to seek cancer screening and have low social support, resulting in poor outcomes. The Windsor-Essex Compassion Care Community (WECCC) is a complex social intervention designed to improve individual, family and population-level quality of life, health and wellness. This project sparks a new collaboration among the WECCC, Windsor Regional Cancer Centre (WRCC), and Trans Wellness Ontario (TWO) and pilots a social intervention to improve the quality of life of LGBTQ2+ persons experiencing cancer.

Impact

The overall goal of this project is to explore the processes, outcomes and potential impacts of applying a Compassion Care Community (CCC) approach for LGBTQ2+ people receiving cancer care in Windsor-Essex. Applying an implementation science framework, we will achieve the following objectives: (1) generate theory about what works (or doesn’t work), why, and under which circumstances; (2) understand potential intervention impacts (quality of life, health and wellbeing, social connection/disconnection, health and cancer services utilization); (3) engage stakeholders (patients, families, partners, organizational partners) in rapid improvement and spark new collaborations for scale and spread.

Events

This team presented their research project at the WE-SPARK Cheers to Hope event in May of 2023.