Improving understanding of pancreatic cancer among patients using an animated patient’s guide to benefit informed decisions and health outcomes.

Abstract

e16282 Background: Pancreatic cancer (PC) outcomes continue to be dismal in the United States with an estimated 48,220 deaths in 2022. Patients have limited knowledge regarding their management options making informed decisions difficult. Health literacy (HL) is a major barrier confronting patient understanding and visual formats of learning have been shown to help overcome HL barriers to enable informed patient understanding. Effective PC learning resources can mitigate poor disease understanding, and reduce HL impediments essential to patient decisions and best outcomes. In this study, we evaluated patient knowledge improvement, engagement, and participation in decisions with their oncology providers using National Pancreas Foundation’s (NPF) ‘An Animated Patient’s Guide to Pancreatic Diseases (APG)’ . Methods: NPF introduced APG in 2013, as an educational resource to address patient needs, informed decisions, barriers to HL and gaps in understanding. Using visual formats of learning (animations, videos, slide shows), we monitored metrics and learner feedback from September, 2013 to September 2021 (8 years). We evaluated learner activity, number of views with highest retention in the US and globally. Results: We gathered learner data on APG from 4,551,079 learners from over 100 countries. Most learners (60%) were from the US with 54% being patients, 17% family/caregivers, 16% healthcare providers and 13% other. The top 3 animations “ Understanding Clinical Trials”, “ Pancreatic Cancer: Treatment and Outcomes”, and “ Pancreatic Cancer: Signs, Symptoms and Risk Factors” had 182,217; 82,585; and 64,970 viewings respectively. Top 3 expert videos viewed most were “ What are the different stages of pancreatic cancer?”, “ What are the symptoms of pancreatic cancer?”, and “ What is a “Placebo” in a clinical trial and is it always used?" with 15,357; 12,475; and 5,282 views respectively. Conclusions: Our study shows that visual formats of education provided by APG were effective in improving patient understanding, enabling informed decisions, and addressing needs of PC patients with poor understanding and HL. Pancreatic cancer education utilizing visual formats has great potential to provide effective learning for patients. Continued efforts should be made to address HL barriers, inform patients, and provide resources that address needs in PC to achieve best healthcare outcomes.