Building Trust and Increasing Patient Engagement With MS Communities: Marisa McGinley, DO

WATCH TIME: 5 minutes

“I think as a MS community and research community, we need to engage with community partners, and also patients living with MS to really understand those barriers that are not necessarily in our discrete data.”

Patients living with multiple sclerosis (MS) experience different types of barriers that limit their access to care such as accessibility to transportation for appointments or internet access for virtual appointments. The voices of the MS community, the patients themselves, may be of assistance with providing feedback to clinicians to create a more flexible and personalized approach to delivery of care. In addition, allowing patients to speak with clinicians on their access concerns moves toward building a stronger foundation of trust between both. Marisa McGinley, DO, an attendee from the Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ACTRIMS) Forum held February 23-25, 2023, in San Diego, California, presented on similar topics regarding the relationship between clinicians and patients in MS care.

McGinley sat down at the forum with NeurologyLive® to talk about the ways clinicians could engage with patient communities in MS, including the types of efforts it would take to address the current issues with care. McGinley, staff neurologist, Mellen Center for Multiple Sclerosis Treatment and Research, Cleveland Clinic, spoke specifically on one of the issues, the lack of trust that is prevalent in older and African American patient populations.

Click here for more coverage of ACTRIMS 2023.