This program, co-financed by the European Union within EU4Health, will last three years and bring together 17 organizations from six countries. The objective is to design, adapt, and test tools that contribute to more understandable, shared, and equitable care for those affected by this disease.
Elche's participation is channeled through the Foundation for the Promotion of Health and Biomedical Research of the Valencian Community (Fisabio), which articulates the scientific and clinical contribution of the health center. The hospital's Urology Service will contribute its accumulated experience to ensure that the resources generated by the project are linked to real care practice and the specific needs of patients.
The international coordinator and principal investigator of CLEAR-PC is a professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health and a member of the Global Health research group at Miguel Hernández University of Elche. Under her direction, the project aims to address one of the most frequent problems in oncological processes: the difficulty for patients and their environment to understand complex and technical medical information, which can vary depending on each person's social, educational, or health context.
The involvement of the Elche hospital ranges from defining the ethical and regulatory framework to identifying key individuals to study needs and barriers in understanding the disease. It also includes adapting the tools that will be part of the final strategy, ensuring a direct connection between research and clinical reality.
“"The work will focus on evaluating the CLEAR-PC strategy in clinical practice. To do this, three pilot studies will be designed together with other European partners, with the aim of analyzing their impact in different care settings in Spain and Belgium."
These pilot studies, each involving approximately 100 patients, will evaluate the strategy's influence on shared decision-making in prostate cancer screening, treatment, and palliative care. They will also analyze its effect on patients' knowledge, satisfaction, and emotional well-being.
Prostate cancer is the second most diagnosed tumor in men worldwide, highlighting the importance of this project in reducing health inequalities and improving clinical communication and health education. The initiative seeks the collaboration of individuals interested in improving the understanding of this disease.
