The National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship (NCCS) submitted comments to the House Energy and Commerce Committee on its 21st Century Cures legislative initiative. In our comments, we urged that the 21st Century Cures effort reflect a goal of ensuring delivery of appropriate treatment to each patient, based on a shared ...

“The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.” -William Osler Since the creation of the National Cancer Act  in 1971, the medical establishment—and indeed our entire society—has taken up the powerful metaphor of a “war on cancer” as the approach to attacking and ...

Every so often I see a patient who views cancer as a constant threat to be handled — it becomes so significant that it is as if she can never let her guard down. I always worry about this, partly because that singular focus on fighting cancer can sometimes detract ...

This guest post is part of the 2015 Cancer Policy Matters "The Imperatives for Quality Cancer Care: 20 Years Later" blog series. Although noted in the literature as early as the 1970’s, serving as the foundation for the 1982 establishment of The Wellness Community (now The Cancer Support Community) and certainly ...

NCCS submitted comments to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the Draft Guidance: Framework for Regulatory Oversight of Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs).  We support the FDA's efforts to develop a strong regulatory framework for LDTs and commend the agency for the open and transparent process it has pursued in ...

What Caught Our Eye (WCOE) Each week, we take a closer look at the cancer policy articles, studies, and stories that caught our attention. In “The Punishing Cost of Cancer Care,” Dr. Mikkael Sekeres describes the difficult conversations he has with patients regarding the cost of cancer treatments and how reviewing ...

Two stories in last week’s New York Times illustrate the complexities of the changing healthcare marketplace.  They both describe discrete issues that beleaguer and hinder the transparency and shared decision-making that we at the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship (NCCS) call for when patients need to make an informed decision ...

Guest post by Peter Bach, MD, MAPP, Director of Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Center for Health Policy and Outcomes. Every November is lung cancer awareness month, but this November is on track to being a pretty special one.  Lung cancer physicians and public health professionals breathed a collective sigh of relief ...

What Caught Our Eye (WCOE) Each week, we take a closer look at the cancer policy articles, studies, and stories that caught our attention. In “Seeing the ‘Invisible Patient,’”Jane Gross addresses the burden of caregiving and how often caregivers’ health, both physical and mental, is overlooked. Ms. Gross refers to an ...

Recently, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) released an updated cancer survivorship care planning (SCP) template—news that was captured by several medical online news outlets including Healio, Medscape, and Cancer.net. Survivorship care planning is a process of cancer care delivery that NCCS has advocated for over the last 20 ...