Here is an overview ACADI’s activities throughout April

• Ageing, Cancer, and Disparities Research Unit – ACADI

Welcome back to the ACADI newsletter! With the spring incoming, here are some budding developments from our team.

Conference submissions

We have been very busy getting ready for our conferences later in the year! We have submitted 7 abstracts across three conferences.

Dr India Pinker had two abstracts accepted to the International Conference on Communication in Healthcare (ICCH)! She will be talking about the role of PPI in health communication research as well as the use of AI to enhance research productivity.

The whole team is really looking forward to the conference of the International society for Geriatric Oncology (SIOG) 2024, and are hoping to be able to present one of our 3 submitted abstracts!

Talks

Dr Sophie Pilleron recently presented a talk on disparities in age at The Christie School of Oncology in Manchester, United Kingdom. Her talk explored interesting insights into older age as a health inequality.

Visiting researcher

From the 16^th to the 17^th of May, we will host an excellent visiting researcher! Mar Estupiñán Fdez. de Mesa will speak about her work on “Understanding and tackling breast cancer inequities”. We look forward to hearing about her work and collaborating on some exciting projects.

Relevant events

If you are interested in hearing about other events closely related to our work, the Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention (EPICAN) group is hosting a lecture series on Epidemiology and Prevention in cancer, featuring some scientists invited by our team.  

On the 25^th of April, the series hosted Dr Guy Launoy who spoke about social inequalities in cancer incidence and survival. The recordings of all lectures are made available here: Lecture series – Epidemiology & Prevention 2023-2024 » Luxembourg Institute of Health (lih.lu)  

Meet the Team

We hope you are enjoying getting to know us. This month we hear from our postdoctoral fellow, Dr India Pinker:

“I initially trained as a health psychologist, hoping to understand and support pain management in chronic conditions. My experiences during patient placements, however, showed a disheartening pattern: a pervasive breakdown of communication between patients and the systems that care for them. Patients, regardless of which condition they had, often felt marginalised in their own care, especially if they were part of vulnerable groups.

This experience steered me towards research, driven to address the systemic communication for as many patients and Healthcare Professionals as I could, starting from their medical education. My PhD focused on the role of empathy in medical communication skills, and I sought to bridge the gap between patients and healthcare providers by incorporating both perspectives into communication skills development. Yet, as I delved deeper and finished my PhD, I recognised this only scratched the surface of a much larger issue.

To empower vulnerable patients, particularly older adults, we need to tailor our approaches to their care.  When it comes to knowing the best way to do this, however, we still have so much to learn.

Teams like ACADI aim to build this knowledge, and from that reduce the disparities older adults face on the cancer journey. Joining this team presented a perfect opportunity to contribute towards reducing the care disparities I had seen and I hope to play my part in improving older patients’ care experience. Ageing is a journey we all hope to experience, and with dedicated teams like ACADI, that journey need not be daunting.”

Dr India Pinker

Stay tuned for more developments from the team!

Until next time, keep well!

Team ACADI