Our expert answers 3 Questions
Many cancer survivors suffer from symptoms such as fatigue, sleep disturbances, mood disorders, and chronic pain which greatly decrease their quality of life. There are low-cost treatments for these symptoms with high levels of evidence for their safety and effectiveness including yoga, acupuncture/acupressure, expressive arts and meditation. Unfortunately, most of these treatments are not covered by insurance, the evidence around these therapies are not well known by providers, and these therapies often have limited availability both within cancer centers and in the community. My research focuses on finding solutions to these barriers including the creation of clinical guidelines, implementation science studies, and training oncology providers to be leaders in providing evidence based integrative oncology care.
First and foremost, helping people diagnosed with cancer have better healthier lives. Our projects testing self-acupressure and whole food diets for fatigue and sleep disturbances have shown significant differences in cancer survivors quality of life and improvement in symptoms such as fatigue, mood, pain and sleep. How to best implement and disseminate these results to a diverse group of people diagnosed with cancer, who are found in a wide variety of healthcare and community settings is the next challenge. Also, how eHealth technologies may be an effective tool to disseminate self-help integrative treatments.
We now have a whole suite of therapies that offer people diagnosed with cancer the ability to have improved quality of life and fewer symptoms from their cancer and cancer treatments. Healthcare systems and insurers should be working with researchers, providers and patients to understand how to incorporate these evidence-based integrative oncology services and provide the best care for their patients.