Making an Impact on Survivors at the St. Jude Transition Oncology Program
On behalf of the Stewart Survivorship Initiative, Children’s Cancer Cause is pleased to share another update on how funding from the 2022 Survivorship Champion’s Prize is being used to advance survivorship care. We’re highlighting the progress of each 2022 Prize recipient during June, which is National Cancer Survivor Month.
Last week, we shared an update from the Survivorship Program at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, and today we’re sharing an update from the St. Jude Transition Oncology Program.
An Update from the St. Jude Transition Oncology Program (TOP)
Children’s Cancer Cause presented the St. Jude survivorship transition program with a Recognition Award for Program Impact last year for TOP’s efforts to support survivors and families through major care transitions by providing guidance and education around specific transition-related needs and navigation services.
Emily Browne, DNP, Director of TOP, recently shared that the award continues to provide both tangible and inspirational boosts to their team. They’ve introduced “Pass the Prize” as part of their team meetings, in which they physically pass the award object to a team member and share how that team member is making a difference in the care of their early childhood cancer survivors. The team member being recognized then houses the award in their office for the month before selecting the team member to pass it to next. At Children’s Cancer Cause, we’re so gratified to hear that “Pass the Prize” has become an important conversation starter and a meaningful visual reminder of past and future impact.
As we shared previously, the Recognition Award made it possible for the Transition Oncology Program to produce a podcast focused on the transition to off-treatment and early survivorship. Their first podcast was scheduled for recording this month and will eventually be available for all childhood cancer survivors.
Funds from the Award have also made it possible to purchase books and other patient-facing resources focused on childhood cancer survivorship, the return to the classroom, and coping with chronic conditions. These books are being distributed to TOP school advocacy coordinators, social workers, and psychologists to give to families as needed. Books include Childhood Cancer Survivors: A Practical Guide to Your Future; My Kid Has Cancer: A Mother’s Journey Through Childhood Cancer and Beyond; The Cancer Survivor’s Companion: Practical Ways to Cope with Your Feelings After Cancer; and Taking Cancer to School (Special Kids in School Series).
TOP has incorporated three core Champion’s Prize tenets - program impact, collaboration, and scalability - into their strategic plan:
Optimize collaboration across St. Jude clinical, psychosocial, and affiliate partners and within the TOP team to provide transition-related psychosocial care to patients with catastrophic diseases and their families consistent with discipline and disease-specific standards of care. Their focus of this goal is collaboration both internally and with St. Jude community partners at their U.S. affiliate sites.
Leverage their new electronic health record to support the use of cohesive, comprehensive interventions and assessments while documenting in a concise, integrated, and meaningful way. This goal addresses scalability – ensuring that they have the data input and reporting capabilities to track patients within the program, measure outcomes, and make adjustments to processes in order to sustain the program’s continued growth.
Enhance quality improvement and research initiatives to develop and implement evidence-based, transition-related psychosocial care. This goal emphasizes program impact and encourages internal and external dissemination of knowledge needed to support families during the transition off treatment and early survivorship.
Children’s Cancer Cause is grateful for the TOP program’s stewardship of the Recognition Award for Program Impact and their continuing efforts to improve survivorship care for survivors of childhood cancers.