ELEVATING SURVIVORSHIP

ACCC partnered with the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship (NCCS) on the Elevating Survivorship project. With this project, NCCS and ACCC hope to build on the increasing demand for patient involvement in all aspects of healthcare and, specifically, to empower patients and patient advocates to engage with their healthcare providers to improve cancer survivorship care at the local level.

ACCC conducted a web-based survey to learn about gaps in survivorship care delivery, technical support needed to improve survivorship care, and unmet and evolving survivorship care needs of patients who have been treated with immunotherapy.

Results and analysis of these two national surveys were published in the Oncology Issues (May/June 2019). Read Elevating Survivorship: Results from Two National Surveys.

Key findings from the NCCS survey:

• Survey results clearly illustrate the emotional and financial challenges that cancer survivors face, both during and long after their treatment.
• While survivors feel their physical needs are being addressed, they are not getting the help they need for some of the most frequent and severe side effects.
• Current consensus recommendations propose, at a minimum, planning discussions for survivorship care be initiated at diagnosis, revisited across the survivorship trajectory, and be reinforced often via multiple formats.
• All members of the multidisciplinary team need to be aware of the importance of survivorship planning and follow-up.
• Education is needed to equip all members of the multidisciplinary team to provide wide ranging post-treatment survivorship support.
• Cancer programs can more fully meet patient needs by integrating and prescribing non-pharmacologic supportive care services (e.g., social work, psychology, and nutrition) and reinforcing the need for payers to reimburse these services.
• In terms of IO survivorship, the ACCC survey findings point to the need for the concept of survivorship to evolve as IO therapies are used more extensively in the adjuvant setting.