Impacting the lives of cancer survivors: reflections on the first year of the journal of cancer survivorship: research and practice

It hardly seems that a year has gone by since the first issue of the journal was published. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the many authors and reviewers who contributed to the completion of the first volume. By necessity, the range of topics represents a small sampling of the challenges cancer survivors face [1, 2]; despite this, the first year went well. The reviews were comprehensive and the manuscript production timely. We were able to accept half of the total number of papers submitted. I tried to balance topics and methodologies to include many types of cancers, problem areas, and methodologies. Methodologies ranged from population health studies to qualitative analysis; each has their place in advancing our knowledge of cancer survivorship. This journal was created to communicate new knowledge that will improve the lives of cancer survivors. An area of inquiry that we look forward to receiving manuscripts on relates to ways in which we can improve long term health outcomes. We need investigations on the long term health of survivors of all types of cancers. We also desperately need research related to health care delivery so we can genuinely improve the access, quality and cost of health care services. Evidence based policy and operations can emerge from such efforts. We also seek intervention studies that help us decide which approaches are effective for what problems, how long we can expect them to work, and at what cost (economic and personal). This type of knowledge is critical so that survivors can make decisions that truly impact their ability go about their lives as “normally” as possible. We need to come up with new approaches for addressing the myriad of problems and opportunities that define cancer survivorship. While chronic illness models can provide guidance [3], there are many aspects of cancer as a chronic illness that differ from problems experienced in nonmalignant chronic illness. Descriptive investigations in understudied cancers and concomitant problems need to be submitted to this journal as well. Studies on the potential role of biological, behavioral, and environmental factors that maybe related to health, functional and emotional challenges need to be better defined. Once these potential “risk factors” are clarified then their specific contribution needs to be identified in population-based, prospective studies. These should be followed by intervention studies to demonstrate that actually modifying these risks result in a reduction of the risk and improvement in targeted outcomes. This type of work can set the stage for the identification of a handful of critical risk factors using sound epidemiological principles and approaches. However, we must not forget that this represents only one pathway to knowledge. Also, studies related to efforts at preventing the symptom burden that often accompanies cancer survivorship is of major interest to this journal. We should work toward efforts to aggressively assist survivors in returning as closely as possible to their “old normal” in terms of J Cancer Surviv (2008) 2:1–2 DOI 10.1007/s11764-008-0045-2