PHILADELPHIA – The Cancer Patient Education Network (CPEN) honored the Patient Education Team from Penn Medicine’s OncoLink with the 2018 Excellence in Patient Education Award. The award recognizes individuals or programs that use creative approaches to develop and circulate cancer education to patients and health care professionals. The OncoLink team received the award Friday during the CPEN annual meeting in Atlanta.
Launched in 1994, OncoLink was the first cancer information website on the internet and remains one of the largest, with a mission to support patients, caregivers, and practitioners with up-to-date information on all aspects of cancer diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.
The award honors the OncoLink educational content team, which includes managing editor Carolyn Vachani, MSN, RN, oncology content specialist Karen Arnold-Korzeniowski, BSN, RN, and psychosocial oncology content editor Christina Bach, MBE, MSW, LCSW, OSW-C.
OncoLink’s information covers all types of cancer, treatment options, risk factors, prevention strategies, and survivorship concerns, with the intent to help patients and families make educated treatment decisions and become active participants in their care. Other features include a section to help newly diagnosed patients navigate their cancer experience.
OncoLink also provides tools and educational materials to support the practice of busy practitioners, including on treatment education, psychosocial support and survivorship care plans. These create a one-stop shop for patient education, enabling more impactful patient interactions, improving patient-provider communication and satisfaction.
Among its accomplishments, the team has produced a survivorship care-plan builder. The resulting care plans aim to ease common concerns expressed by cancer survivors. This tool has been used to create over 80,000 individualized care plans, which have received overwhelmingly positive feedback. The team continues to refine the tool based on the needs of cancer survivors and care providers. The team also regularly expands and updates OncoLink’s library of resources, including articles, videos, and blogs. Its work reaches millions of patients via the website as well as syndication and licensing partners.
Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.
The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.
Penn Medicine is an $11.1 billion enterprise powered by more than 49,000 talented faculty and staff.