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Introduction
Chair, Institute of Medicine Committee on Cancer Survivorship: Dr. Sheldon Greenfield
This workshop is designed to advance one of the key recommendations of the Institute of Medicine report From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor: Lost in Transition (see the workshop agenda and list of participants in Appendix A and B, respectively). The recommendation states that patients completing primary treatment should be provided with a comprehensive care summary and follow-up plan that are clearly and effectively explained. This Survivorship Care Plan should be written by the principal provider or providers who coordinated oncology treatment, and it should be reimbursed by third-party payers of health care. Such a plan would inform patients (and their providers) of the long-term effects of cancer and its treatment, identify psychosocial support resources in their communities, and provide guidance on follow-up care, prevention, and health maintenance (see the IOM recommendation in Appendix C).
The charge to workshop participants is to identify barriers to implementing survivorship care planning and then outline concrete steps that can be taken to address the challenges and the opportunities ahead.
Vice-Chair, Institute of Medicine Committee on Cancer Survivorship: Ms. Ellen Stovall
Twenty-six years ago, when the founders of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship (NCCS) got together, they envisioned a world in which cancer research, cancer treatment, and cancer care would be very integrated
and almost seamless. They described a model of care in which the psychosocial and spiritual concerns, vocational and financial barriers, and bothersome symptoms that often accompany a cancer diagnosis would be addressed with as much seriousness as the cancer itself. The term “survivorship” was the term coined to describe this optimal approach to cancer care. Today, survivorship is in the mainstream lexicon. It is the foresight of the NCCS founders that has brought us together today and closer to realizing this vision.
The Institute of Medicine is to be commended for its compendia of work on cancer survivorship and quality of care. Between 1999 and 2005, it issued a series of reports dealing with quality cancer care writ very large and then with a focus on policy issues specific to survivorship and palliative care for both children and adults with cancer.
We are very grateful to the authors of background papers commissioned for the workshop: Tim Byers; Wendy Demark-Wahnefried and Lee Jones; Craig Earle; David Poplack, Marc Horowitz, and Michael Fordis; and Deborah Schrag (see commissioned papers in Appendix D). Qualitative researchers Annette Bamundo, Rebecca Day, Marsha Fountain, Reynolds Kinzey, and Catherine Harvey also contributed an invaluable body of work for discussion today.
NCCS is sponsoring this workshop in partnership with the Lance Armstrong Foundation and the National Cancer Institute, through its Office of Cancer Survivorship.
In closing, I would like to acknowledge the thousands of survivors who every day inform our work. Their day-to-day experiences with survivorship are what we are here to address in terms of how to ensure optimal care in clinical practice.
