IMF Chief Medical Officer Discusses Global Initiatives to Improve Myeloma Treatment

Mikhael: The IMF likes to live up to the I in IMF, which is international. We try to participate in research internationally and in a way that perhaps one individual group or even nation couldn't do by itself. We have an Asian myeloma network, a Latin American myeloma network, we’re doing projects in Australia, and in vast sections of the US and Canada. One program that I would like to highlight is called the M-Power program. It speaks to empower patients and communities to change the course of myeloma. Myeloma adversely affects every patient who has it, but there are those populations and communities where we see a tremendous disparity, in particular within the African American and the Latino American populations.

So, the IMF M-Power program was built to reduce those disparities, and it's really focused on three major activities and programs. One is community engagement. Can we engage the community and understand how this disease affects them? We have programs in churches, sororities, fraternities, and community centers. We'll partner with anybody and anywhere to do it. I recently did a program for Juneteenth in Harlem, we’ve done programs across the country. It’s also educating he primary care world. We talked about how delayed diagnosis is a problem in myeloma. This is even longer in African American, Latino American patients, and so we want to help primary care doctors think about myeloma and order the right tests.

The third is the enhancement of the care, so engagement of the community, education of the primary care world, and enhancement of the care of the patient by ensuring that they have greater access to the therapies that we've been developing. Myeloma has been a huge success story in how patients are living longer, and yet, sadly, that has not been realized by so many domestically and internationally. It’s designed to find ways to improve access and to improve the care that people receive. This is just one of many programs that the IMF is involved in.