Addressing Financial Toxicity From a Global Perspective: How to Advance Shared-Learning to Facilitate Change?

Financial toxicity is a global phenomenon, describing the objective financial burden and subjective financial distress caused by cancer and its treatment. It is experienced in all types of health care systems by patients as individuals and their households as family units. The manifestation of financial toxicity can differ on the basis of health care system and the economic stability of a country. Addressing financial toxicity requires multilevel strategies with contextual understanding and cultural sensitivity at macro, meso, and micro levels. In this article, we use two regions (Asia and Europe) as case examples to illustrate how cancer care leaders may learn from diverse international experiences of financial toxicity, and outline the necessity and benefits of developing a global index system that will enable benchmarking of leadership measures to address financial toxicity.