Webinar – Exercise Is Medicine in Oncology: Implementation Based on Solid Evidence
NCCS hosted a webinar featuring Kathryn Schmitz, PhD, MPH, a leading researcher in exercise oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Dr. Schmitz’s research focuses on people living with and beyond cancer and investigates the role exercise in improving physiologic and psychosocial outcomes including symptoms, treatment tolerance, and other chronic diseases. Dr. Schmitz is also the author of Moving Through Cancer, an exercise and strength-training program for cancer survivors.
In this webinar, Dr. Schmitz presents the evidence base for exercise during and after cancer treatment, reviews the current published exercise guidelines from ACS, SCSM, and ASCO, and discusses “what good looks like” in the practice of exercise oncology.
“Most oncology professionals know exercise would be good for their patients,” says Dr. Schmitz. “Most do not prescribe it, perhaps because they do not know HOW. This talk will demonstrate HOW the practice of exercise oncology takes place across dozens of locations in the United States.”
Watch the full video below or watch on YouTube.
Webinar Slides and Related Resources
- Webinar Slide Deck (PDF)
- Dr. Schmitz mentioned a paper she co-wrote in the Journal of Clinical Oncology: Cost-Savings Analysis of an Individualized Exercise Oncology Program in Early-Stage Breast Cancer Survivors
- Buy Moving Through Cancer by Dr. Schmitz on Amazon.com
This webinar is a part of NCCS’s Survivorship Champions program for clinicians and researchers who are interested in improving cancer survivorship care. Learn more at https://canceradvocacy.org/champions.
About Kathryn Schmitz, PhD, MPH
Kathryn Schmitz, PhD, MPH, FACSM, FTOS, FNAK is a Professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Dr. Schmitz previously served as a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences and Director of the Oncology, Nutrition, and Exercise group at the Penn State College of Medicine. She is also a American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor.
Dr. Schmitz’s research focuses of people living with and beyond cancer and investigates the role exercise in improving physiologic and psychosocial outcomes including symptoms, treatment tolerance, and other chronic diseases. In addition, Dr. Schmitz studies technology based supportive care interventions (that include physical activity) to improve outcomes among advanced cancer patients. She has held NCI funding consistently since 2001. She has published over 300 scientific peer-reviewed papers, some in prestigious journals such as JAMA, NEJM, and JCO. Her well-regarded research on resistance exercise and breast cancer related lymphedema has been translated into a physical therapy delivered program called ‘Strength After Breast Cancer’, which is currently delivered in over 1000 locations across the U.S. and beyond.
Dr. Schmitz was the moving force behind two American College of Sports Medicine roundtable guidelines on exercise and cancer, in 2010 and 2019. She founded the Moving Through Cancer initiative of the American College of Sports Medicine, which has a bold goal of making exercise a standard of care in oncology by 2029. She has written a popular press book to raise awareness about exercise for cancer patients, survivors, and their caregivers (Moving Through Cancer, Chronicle Books, 2021). She is a past president of the American College of Sports Medicine.
You can find Dr. Schmitz on Twitter at @fitaftercancer.
