Oncology patient navigation programs are becoming a standard of care to help at-risk patients overcome barriers to timely cancer care. The potential for navigation is threatened by socio-legal barriers that require resources outside the scope of standard-of-care navigation. We define socio-legal barriers as social problems related to meeting life’s most basic needs (ie, housing, employment, disability) that existing public policy, law, regulation, and programming address and are thus potentially remedied through legal advocacy.
