Mary McCabe named Director of Cancer Survivorship Initiative

Newswise — Mary McCabe, RN, MA has joined Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) as Director of a new Cancer Survivorship Program, a Center-wide initiative intended to address the long-term medical, psychological, and social consequences of cancer and its treatment.

Ms. McCabe, who joins MSKCC from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), has extensive experience in the full range of issues affecting cancer survivors. As increasing numbers of adults are cured of cancer or are living with cancer as a chronic disease, an array of life challenges confront survivors and their families. These include the immediate and late effects of treatment, sexual and reproductive concerns, problems with employment and insurance, altered self-image, depression, fear of disease recurrence, and the early detection or prevention of new cancers.

Recognizing its responsibility to provide this growing population of cancer survivors with specialized follow-up medical and psychosocial care and services, MSKCC has embarked on a Cancer Survivorship Initiative to provide enhanced services to patients and their caregivers. MSKCC and other institutions have had programs of this kind for survivors of childhood cancer for many years.

"For the past 15 years, MSKCC's Post-Treatment Resource Program has ably provided survivors with a number of helpful resources and forums," said MSKCC Physician-in-Chief, Robert E. Wittes. "The PTRP was the first program of its kind for adult cancer survivors anywhere. We now need to broaden our approaches to patients who have survived cancer, so that we can more accurately characterize their medical and general life experiences in the post-treatment setting and intervene more effectively. The lessons learned in this program will affect the way treatment and patient care is delivered in the future and we are very pleased that Mary will be leading this new effort."

Following intensive work as an oncology nurse and clinical nurse specialist, Ms. McCabe was named Director of Nursing Services at the Lombardi Cancer Center at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. in 1983. In 1988, she joined the NCI and, over the next 15 years, served in a number of key positions relating to clinical trials and the promotion of clinical research to health care professionals, the public, as well as payers and health care providers. Since 1999, Ms. McCabe has served as the Acting Director of the NCI's Office of Communications and as Director of the Office of Education and Special Initiatives, which is responsible for a number of policy and educational objectives. During this time she coordinated a multi-institutional working group in the crafting of templates designed to simplify informed consent documents to make them more informative educational vehicles for patients participating in research.

"My role will be one of coordinating the development of Center-wide comprehensive programs for adult cancer survivors," explained Ms. McCabe. Among the interventions that will be offered will be an initial general medical screening of patients entering the post-treatment phase, and follow-up evaluations at appropriate intervals. This follow-up will be a shared responsibility between the Center's physicians and nurses and the patients' community care professionals. Parallel with attention to medical issues, the Center will also provide psychosocial screening and, where needed, intervention to meet the needs of patients and caregivers.

In addition, the Cancer Survivorship Initiative will develop a Center-wide database and research protocols, enabling MSKCC to track and discover the effects of cancer treatment more precisely; create models for predicting the probability of other cancers; identify appropriate follow-up tests; and determine how often follow-up tests should be conducted.

"When you have a premier cancer center such as Memorial Sloan-Kettering, with a large patient population, you're able to look at a group of individuals to see how they've been treated, identify the effects of that treatment, and study interventions that will, in the future, minimize or ameliorate those effects," said Ms. McCabe.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center is the world's oldest and largest institution devoted to prevention, patient care, research and education in cancer. Our scientists and clinicians generate innovative approaches to better understand, diagnose and treat cancer. Our specialists are leaders in biomedical research and in translating the latest research to advance the standard of cancer care worldwide. For more information, go to http://www.mskcc.org.