Helping guide care for cancer survivors in the US
01 February 2024
Professor Michael Jefford is a global leader in cancer survivorship
Advice from Peter Mac’s Professor Michael Jefford is helping the United States National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the US Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) to develop national survivorship standards for people with cancer.
The Australian Cancer Survivorship Centre (ACSC), based at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, previously developed the Victorian Quality Cancer Survivorship Care Framework and Policy template to improve the quality of care provided for cancer survivors.
Professor Jefford, the Director of the ACSC, says people with cancer face a number of challenges as a result of their cancer and cancer treatments.
“Cancer survivors deal with physical issues, such as pain and fatigue, emotional and psychological issues like the worry about cancer recurrence, and practical issues such as difficulty returning to work and financial impacts,” Professor Jefford says.
“Some patients are at risk of late effects, which may arise years after completing treatments, and care needs to be planned to consider all of these factors.
“We were approached by the United States NCI to contribute to the development of national standards in the US, share some of our own learnings and help to define criteria and measures to ensure the highest possible quality of life for people recovering from cancer ,” he said.
Professor Jefford was the only expert from outside the US invited to work with the NCI and DVA in a series of meetings in late 2023.
“A few years ago, we undertook work to answer the question ‘how do we define and measure optimal care for cancer survivors?’ which led to the development of the Victorian Quality Cancer Survivorship Care Framework,” he says.
“The NCI chose this Framework as their starting place and it’s been great to be able to pass on some of the knowledge we gathered when undertaking this work in Victoria.
“We hope we can continue to share information and also have the opportunity to learn from work in the US that will shape how we provide quality care for patients here in Australia.”.
The United States NCI and Department of Veteran Affairs are currently finalising draft survivorship standards and developing a toolkit and resources to support their implementation as part of their next steps.
The Australian Cancer Survivorship Centre developed the Victorian Quality Cancer Survivorship Care Framework and Victorian Quality Cancer Survivorship Care Policy template with funding provided by the Victorian Department of Health.