Cancer Survivorship Briefing Paper Briefing for: Cancer Reform Strategy Patient Experience Working Group Briefing authors: Professor Jessica Corner and Professor Alison Richardson Date created: 18 April 2007 What is ‘cancer survivorship’? There is increasing recognition of the needs of cancer survivors. In the US a National Action Plan for Cancer Survivorship has been developed through a partnership between the UC Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and the Lance Armstrong Foundation. The term ‘cancer survivor’ has been widely interpreted. Our definition is someone who is in remission, or is not undergoing active treatment, or is living with progressive disease and may be receiving cancer treatment but is not in the terminal phase of illness, or who has had cancer in the past. Survivors face numerous physical, psychological, social, spiritual and financial issues for the remaining years of their lives (1). Why is cancer survivorship increasingly important? It is estimated that 1.2 million people in the UK are living following a diagnosis of cancer and, as cancer incidence rises and cancer mortality falls, the number of people living with cancer will grow significantly over the coming decade (1.5% of men and 2.5% of women in UK) 1 . As this group grows, so too will the number of people living after cancer. Data from the US indicate the need to manage more effectively the long-term burden of cancer on individuals and society. A recently published study from the US National Health Interview Study (4) compared nearly 5,000 cancer survivors with over 90,000 people without a history of cancer and found that: • Cancer survivors were more likely to report being in poor health and have psychological or functional disability than those without a cancer diagnosis. • The likelihood of poor health and disability is much higher among those who also have chronic co-morbid conditions. • For those under the age of 65, individuals with a cancer diagnosis are six times more likely to report being unable to work because of their health than those without a cancer diagnosis. There is also evidence from the UK indicating the financial burden of cancer on individuals, which may be brought on by individuals being unable to work or because of the significant additional costs resulting from a cancer diagnosis 1 There are no reliable figures for the number of people living with a cancer diagnosis as this requires incidence data collected over long time periods together with reliable follow-up for death (ie before cancer registry data was available). Estimates of prevalence based on data to end of 1992 are therefore likely to be an underestimate (2). 1