Edited by: Dr Matthew Banegas and Dr Janet S. de Moor
Financial hardship is a common experience for cancer patients and their families; however, few interventions have been developed to mitigate the economic burden of cancer and its treatment. This article collection in Trials addresses these gaps in the literature. It includes articles reporting on patient-facing interventions to address different aspects of cancer-related financial hardship. Each article describes a pragmatic study, designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention in real-life practice conditions. Three of the five studies evaluate personalized financial navigation, testing the effectiveness of navigation embedded into the oncology or community setting. Two additional trials are evaluating interventions to address important contributors to cancer-related financial hardship, namely health insurance coverage and employment disruption. Collectively these five interventions will add substantially to what is known about evidence-based approaches for addressing the economic burden of cancer. They represent different intervention designs and modes of intervention delivery, thus providing important templates for future interventions to address financial hardship.