Wrap-up from our San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) Highlights conference
Binaytara Foundation held the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) Highlights on February 21, 2021, via Zoom video conferencing. The program saw a large turnout of 112 attendees, which included international participants from Argentina, Egypt, Greece, India, Nepal, the Philippines, Romania, and Turkey.
“Highlights is for providers who were unable to attend the [SABCS] conference. Our goal is to pick out the most clinically relevant pieces and deliver that to physicians to make sure the practice is up-to-date,” Dr. Fengting Yan, a medical-oncologists at Swedish Medical Center and the co-moderator for this event, explains.
Speakers at the conference included Dr. Siddhartha Yadav (Mayo Clinic), Dr. Mark Pegram (Stanford University), Dr. Hannah Linden (Seattle Cancer Care Alliance), Dr. Roberto Leon-Ferre (Mayo Clinic), and Dr. Alvaro Moreno Aspitia (Mayo Clinic).
The faculty were chosen based on their clinical expertise, and their reputation as being outstanding communicators and thought leaders in the field. Our speakers generously agreed to volunteer their time on a weekend and found ways to comfortably engage the audience, ensuring meaningful discussions.
“We take care to identify speakers who are not only experts in their field but also excellent educators,” Dr. Siddhartha Yadav, Assistant Professor of Oncology at Mayo Clinic, co-moderator for this event, and co-chair of the Binaytara Foundation education committee, commented. “In addition, we make efforts to maintain gender and racial diversity of our speakers.”
While SABCS was conducted virtually over four days in December and involved wide-ranging topics, including experimental biology, etiology, prevention, diagnosis, and therapies, Dr. Yan and Dr. Yadav worked with the presenters to identify key, clinically relevant information.
“By summarizing the key findings from SABCS within a half-day and making it freely available to oncologists around the world, we made it easier for several clinicians involved in cancer care to attend the conference, “Dr. Yadav shares. “Ultimately, our hope is that this will translate to better outcomes for patients treated by the participating clinicians.”
To improve participants’ engagement, the education committee implemented an interactive case-based discussion section at the end of the event. The goal was to reinforce the knowledge that participants had gained from the faculty talks.
“Although active clinicians may see similar types of cases of Breast Cancer there are nuances in clinical care and often there is more than one way to render the best care,” Dr. Yan explains. “This is why the Q&A discussion is so valuable, and as a moderator, you learn from this information, too.”
Most of our attendees stated that they would provide counseling and treatment options to their patients based on what they learned from the activity, as well as educating their team members about what they learned. You can access archived presentations from this conference and others at education.binayfoundation.org.
The Binaytara Foundation aims to improve healthcare in resource-poor communities and improve cancer care worldwide by educating healthcare providers and community members, advocating for better access to care, and innovating program models and services that improve access to cancer care. Binaytara Foundation’s charitable projects include a bone marrow transplant center in Nepal, hospice and palliative care programs in Nepal and India, and the establishment of a cancer hospital in Southern Nepal. For more information on our projects, visit binayfoundation.org.
