Empowering childhood cancer survivors through integrated, individualized health insurance education

Financial toxicity is a well-documented side effect of cancer treatment, and can be a lifelong burden for childhood cancer survivors (CCS). CCS have difficulty maintaining adequate health insurance and this results in decreased healthcare visits, reduced survivor-focused healthcare, and missed outpatient clinic appointments. For CCS transitioning into adult care, understanding health insurance—how to get it, keep it, and use it—is a key aspect of combatting financial toxicity and of maintaining ongoing survivorship care. Thus, there is a clear role for longitudinal education on health insurance for CCS. In the Childhood Cancer Survivor Program at the University of Minnesota, health insurance education and counseling delivered by social workers has been incorporated as a regular part of routine survivorship care visits. In this commentary we provide a rationale for why health insurance education is crucial for CCS, describe our existing program for delivering this education, and make recommendations for future programs and directions in the current healthcare landscape. We believe our experience incorporating insurance education into clinical care is unique, and in sharing it, we hope to raise awareness of the need for health insurance education as part of cancer survivorship care and also to springboard future research and collaborative efforts in this realm.