Training financial navigators: A systematic approach and preliminary findings.

337 Background: Emergent research highlights the potential for oncology financial navigation (FN) to both mitigate the harmful effects of financial toxicity at the patient level and reduce financial loss at the institution level. Yet, despite the promise of FN, there is little standardization regarding FN training content, delivery mechanisms, and timing. We describe the process of training financial navigators for participation in a multi-site FN clinical trial and present training evaluation metrics on the acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility of the program. Methods: Participants were trained on FN principles and study procedures. For FN training, participants independently completed the Association of Community Cancer Centers’ (ACCC) Financial Advocacy Bootcamp (Levels 1 and 2), which included content on financial advocacy, insurance optimization, financial distress screening, and cost-related health literacy. For study-specific training, the research team offered instruction on standard operating procedures and data collection processes. Training occurred via a multi-hour, multi-week virtual experience. All sessions were recorded and made available for future reference. Pre- and post- training, an investigator-designed survey assessed participants’ confidence in their: knowledge, ability to recruit patients, management of FN, management of challenging patients, and referring patients to resources, using a 1-10 scale (“10” = most confidence). Wilcoxon signed-rank tests assessed score changes pre-and post-training. Participants also rated agreement with statements about the acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility of the intervention on a 5-point scale (“5” = “strong agreement”). Results: In total, 32 navigators (predominantly social workers), across 8 clinical settings each completed 24 hours of training (ACCC Bootcamp and study-specific combined). Pre-training, respondents felt confident in their knowledge (median: 7.0), ability to recruit (8.0), management of FN (8.0), management of challenging patients (9.0), and referring patients to resources (9.0). Among 15 participants who completed both pre- and post-training measures, significant improvements were found post-training in knowledge (p = .002), managing FN (p = .032), and referring to resources (p = .008). Of 18 participants who completed post-training evaluation metrics, median acceptability was 4.75 (range 3.5-5.0), appropriateness 4.50 (range 3.0-5.0), and feasibility 4.38 (range 3.0-5.0). Conclusions: Our findings suggest the acceptability and feasibility of implementing a systematic training process for financial navigation, along with improvements in participant confidence post-training. Our experience provides guidance to institutions and research teams seeking to implement FN and offers insight into content and delivery mechanisms deemed appropriate by potential end-users. Clinical trial information: NCT04931251 .