Dr. Augusto Villanueva Rodríguez, Medical Director of the Liver Cancer Program at NYU Langone Health, discusses why Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous patients often face poorer outcomes in liver cancer care. He explains how late diagnosis, limited access to curative therapies, and low participation in surveillance programs contribute to disparities. Dr. Villanueva encourages patients to know their risks, get tested for hepatitis B and C, manage fatty liver disease, and speak up for equitable, culturally sensitive care. His message: prevention, early action, and self-advocacy save lives.
Transcript
Dr. Augusto Villanueva:
So, I think that I have tremendous respect for my patients, and I think the way that I show that is to make sure that they don’t have any questions when they leave the office. I always ask, “Do you have any questions? Is everything clear?” And I’m obsessed about that, because I think that if you leave the office with questions, you have a lot of anxiety, you go to the internet, to Dr. Google, which is a very bad provider.
So I think that’s very important. And the other thing that I think patients appreciate is to have a clear plan of what’s going to happen. So, you have the diagnosis, what’s the next step? Now we’re going to do the staging. Staging of the tumor includes this CAT scan, and this and that. Once we have the staging, we can do the treatment. Treatment can be A, B, or C. And then when we get to that point, what’s going to happen next? What’s going to happen next? What do you expect? How is the treatment?
So what if I’m going to have a TACE or a Y90? What does the actual treatment entail? What’s going to happen in the office? Who’s going to do the procedure? That visualization of what’s going to happen, I found that patients feel empowered. They understand what’s going to happen, and that’s very useful for them to understand the journey a little bit more.