Abstract C140: Best practices for surveying climate at a matrix and consortium comprehensive cancer center to promote inclusive excellence
Authors: Schiaffino Melody K. , Nguyen Van "Vannie" K. , Villanueva Xochitl , Phan Jonathan , Tillman Jennifer , Freeman Yariela , Banegas Mateo 
Published: September 2024

The National Cancer Institute has prioritized a focus on an inclusive and diverse workforce as an essential component to advancing the science and quality of cancer care. New requirements for cancer centers to intentionally demonstrate a commitment to inclusion have made understanding organizational climate critical. Organizational culture is an essential, necessary, but not sufficient, component to understanding how members of a hospital perceive their leadership, peers, and progress. This quality improvement project aims to share best practices and lessons learned from a climate survey conducted at an NCI-designated matrix and consortium cancer center. We engaged in a mixed methods improvement cycle to understand the universe of survey activities across not only the cancer center, but also our academic partners which house all faculty affiliated with the cancer center including cancer researchers located at two external universities within our catchment area. In partnership with experts, stakeholders, and leadership we developed, tested, and deployed an equity, diversity, and inclusion focused climate survey to N=2355 members over a period of 3 week in 2024. Recipients included trainees, staff, and faculty using multiple modalities including word of mouth, personalized emails, and targeted pop-ups around the cancer center that allowed for in person contact. In particular the pop-up was part of a “warm” campaign to ensure responses, we also posted flyers with a QR code across the hospital, and deployed reminders were shared via the hospitals weekly via electronic newsletter. More specifically, the pop-ups were tables that were announced on the day they were deployed so that participants could visit a different part of the hospital and complete the survey, receive merchandise, and sign up for additional drawings and incentives. We had an 18% response rate, slightly better rates among faculty and staff. We also found that participants were more likely to respond to invitations sent directly to their email, this was closely followed by QR codes. Pop-up visitors ranged from 50-100 persons per instance for the six throughout the 3-week survey period. We observed similar increases in our utilization of both emails and QR codes, however, personalized emails had a greater more immediate impact than the QR codes likely due to convenience. We found that multi-method approaches to targeting membership for surveys is essential in the present era of information overload. There were at least 2 other enterprise-wide surveys going to faculty and trainees that overlapped with our cancer center member faculty and trainees thus increasing their burden for fatigue. We learned that it was key to work with all survey leadership to minimize redundancy. We also plan to meet to discuss best practices and will be sharing information across silos to improve these efforts collectively, a major accomplishment resulting from our efforts.

Citation Format: Melody K. Schiaffino, Van "Vannie" K. Nguyen, Xochitl Villanueva, Jonathan Phan, Jennifer Tillman, Yariela Freeman, Mateo Banegas. Best practices for surveying climate at a matrix and consortium comprehensive cancer center to promote inclusive excellence [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 17th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2024 Sep 21-24; Los Angeles, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2024;33(9 Suppl):Abstract nr C140.