Does the Type of Fat Matter? : Association of Visceral and Subcutaneous Fat with Adiponectin Levels in Post-Menopausal Women with Obesity

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The Correlation Between Exercise and Sleep in Postmenopausal Women

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OncoLog Volume 49, Number 10, October 2004

Treating Head and Neck Cancer Requires Extraordinary Coordination Among Disciplines Researchers Seek to Understand the Mysteries of Uterine Cancer and to Find Better Treatments Mammography vs. Magnetic Resonance Imaging: A Breast Cancer Prevention Specialist and a Radiologist Weigh in on the Recent Debate House Call: The Role of Alcohol and Tobacco in Head and Neck Cancer DiaLog: Sexuality after Gynecologic Cancer, by Karen Basen-Engquist, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Behavioral Healthhttps://openworks.mdanderson.org/oncolog/1133/thumbnail.jp

Analyzing Body Fat in Participants from Project TONE: An Exercise and Diet Intervention to Improve Body Composition in Postmenopausal Women with Normal BMI but Higher Body Fat

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Increasing Referral of LBJ Patients to the Active Living After Cancer (ALAC) Program

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Know Your Value: Negotiation Skill Development for Junior Investigators in the Academic Environment—A Report from the American Society of Preventive Oncology\u27s Junior Members Interest Group

The American Society of Preventive Oncology (ASPO) is a professional society for multidisciplinary investigators in cancer prevention and control. One of the aims of ASPO is to enable investigators at all levels to create new opportunities and maximize their success. One strategy adopted by ASPO was to develop the Junior Members Interest Group in 1999. The Interest Group membership includes predoctoral fellows, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty members who are provided career development and training opportunities (1). Responsibilities of the members of the Junior Members Interest Group include serving on the ASPO Executive Committee and the Program Planning Committee and organizing professional development sessions at ASPO\u27s annual meeting. As part of the 2014 ASPO annual meeting, the Junior Members Interest Group organized a session entitled “Negotiation Skill Development for Junior Investigators in the Academic Environment.” This interactive session was designed to provide early-career investigators an opportunity to practice their negotiation skills and to receive expert advice and strategies to effectively negotiate new faculty positions in an academic environment. The session focused primarily on negotiating an initial academic appointment from a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow to an assistant professor–level position. In addition to the main focus, the session also covered renegotiation for assistant and associate-level investigators as they navigate through their careers. The session began with an interactive exercise led by Dr. Stephanie A.N. Silvera (Associate Professor of Public Health, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ) where participants engaged in a mock salary negotiation session with another member of the audience (Table 1). Following the negotiation exercise, Dr. Silvera led a debriefing session. Next, four panelists at different levels in their academic careers were invited to provide their personal perspectives on the topic of effective negotiation: Dr. Faith Fletcher (Assistant Professor of Community Health Sciences, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL) to provide the perspective of a first-year faculty member; Dr. Stephanie A.N. Silvera (Associate Professor of Public Health, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ) to provide the perspective of a recently tenured faculty member; Dr. Karen Basen-Engquist (Professor of Behavioral Science and Director of the Center for Energy Balance, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX) to provide the perspective of a senior faculty member; and Dr. Peter G. Shields (Professor and Deputy Director of the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, OH) to provide the perspective of a senior faculty member with extensive experience on the employer side of an academic appointment negotiation. This report summarizes the main themes that emerged from the negotiation exercise debriefing, the speakers\u27 advice and recommendations, and responses to audience questions during the session

Written emotional disclosure for women with ovarian cancer and their partners: randomised controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE: Written emotional disclosure for 15-20 min a day over 3 to 4 days improves physical and psychological health and may benefit cancer patients. However, no studies have tested the effectiveness of guided writing in cancer patients and their partners. A randomised controlled trial tested whether writing about the patient's diagnosis and treatment of ovarian cancer using the Guided Disclosure Protocol (GDP) is effective in reducing perceived stress and improving quality of life (QoL) in ovarian cancer couples. The study also tested two theories that may account for beneficial effects of written emotional disclosure, the cognitive processing hypothesis and the social interaction hypothesis. METHODS: Patients and their partners (N = 102 couples) were randomised to write at home for 15 min a day over 3 days about the patient's diagnosis and treatment using the GDP or what the patient did the previous day (control). Couples were assessed at baseline, 3- and 6-month follow-ups on the primary outcomes of perceived stress and QoL and secondary outcomes of intrusive thoughts (testing the cognitive processing hypothesis) and illness-related couple communication (testing the social interaction hypothesis). RESULTS: There were no main effects for any outcomes. However, in patients, the GDP improved QoL if illness-related couple communication improved and buffered the effect of intrusive thoughts on perceived stress. CONCLUSIONS: The GDP might benefit patients in certain circumstances, through changes in communication (in line with the social interaction hypothesis). Further research is needed to determine whether patients benefit from interventions to improve illness-related couple communication and under which conditions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

CYberinfrastructure for COmparative effectiveness REsearch (CYCORE): improving data from cancer clinical trials

Improved approaches and methodologies are needed to conduct comparative effectiveness research (CER) in oncology. While cancer therapies continue to emerge at a rapid pace, the review, synthesis, and dissemination of evidence-based interventions across clinical trials lag in comparison. Rigorous and systematic testing of competing therapies has been clouded by age-old problems: poor patient adherence, inability to objectively measure the environmental influences on health, lack of knowledge about patients’ lifestyle behaviors that may affect cancer’s progression and recurrence, and limited ability to compile and interpret the wide range of variables that must be considered in the cancer treatment. This lack of data integration limits the potential for patients and clinicians to engage in fully informed decision-making regarding cancer prevention, treatment, and survivorship care, and the translation of research results into mainstream medical care. Particularly important, as noted in a 2009 report on CER to the President and Congress, the limited focus on health behavior-change interventions was a major hindrance in this research landscape (DHHS 2009). This paper describes an initiative to improve CER for cancer by addressing several of these limitations. The Cyberinfrastructure for Comparative Effectiveness Research (CYCORE) project, informed by the National Science Foundation’s 2007 report “Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21st Century Discovery” has, as its central aim, the creation of a prototype for a user-friendly, open-source cyberinfrastructure (CI) that supports acquisition, storage, visualization, analysis, and sharing of data important for cancer-related CER. Although still under development, the process of gathering requirements for CYCORE has revealed new ways in which CI design can significantly improve the collection and analysis of a wide variety of data types, and has resulted in new and important partnerships among cancer researchers engaged in advancing health-related CI

Agenda for Translating Physical Activity, Nutrition, and Weight Management Interventions for Cancer Survivors into Clinical and Community Practice.

Evidence supporting physical activity, diet, and weight management for cancer survivors has grown, leading to the development of guidelines and interventions. The next step is to identify necessary practice and policy changes and to develop a research agenda to inform how interventions can be delivered to survivors most effectively and efficiently in health care settings and by community-based organizations. Here, an agenda is proposed for research, practice, and policy that incorporates recommendations for a range of programming options, a patient-centered, tailored screening and referral approach, and training needs for survivorship care providers and providers of exercise, nutrition, and weight management services. Research needs to focus on sustainability, dissemination, and implementation. Needed policy changes are presented, as well as opportunities to leverage current health care policies

Patient and physician factors associated with participation in cervical and uterine cancer trials: An NRG/GOG247 study

AbstractPurposeThe aim of this study was to identify patient and physician factors related to enrollment onto Gynecologic Oncology Group (GOG) trials.MethodsProspective study of women with primary or recurrent cancer of the uterus or cervix treated at a GOG institution from July 2010 to January 2012. Logistic regression examined probability of availability, eligibility and enrollment in a GOG trial. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for significant (p<0.05) results reported.ResultsSixty institutions, 781 patients, and 150 physicians participated, 300/780 (38%) had a trial available, 290/300 had known participation status. Of these, 150 women enrolled (59.5%), 102 eligible did not enroll (35%), 38 (13%) were ineligible. Ethnicity and specialty of physician, practice type, data management availability, and patient age were significantly associated with trial availability. Patients with >4 comorbidities (OR 4.5; CI 1.7–11.8) had higher odds of trial ineligibility. Non-White patients (OR 7.9; CI 1.3–46.2) and patients of Black physicians had greater odds of enrolling (OR 56.5; CI 1.1–999.9) in a therapeutic trial. Significant patient therapeutic trial enrollment factors: belief trial may help (OR 76.9; CI 4.9–>1000), concern about care if not on trial (OR12.1; CI 2.1–71.4), pressure to enroll (OR .27; CI 0.12–.64), caregiving without pay (OR 0.13; CI .02–.84). Significant physician beliefs were: patients would not do well on standard therapy (OR 3.6; CI 1.6–8.4), and trial would not be time consuming (OR 3.3; CI 1.3–8.1).ConclusionsTrial availability, patient and physician beliefs were factors identified that if modified could improve enrollment in cancer cooperative group clinical trials