Psychological research in childhood cancer: the Children's Oncology Group perspective

Abstract

Objective: To review benefits and barriers to psychological research on childhood cancer in multidisciplinary, multicenter clinical-trial cooperative groups and identify opportunities for research activities in the coming decade.

Methods: Review of progress of cooperative-group research in the Children's Oncology Group and legacy groups and the contribution of psychological research to this effort.

Results: Multidisciplinary, multicenter clinical-trial cooperative groups offer opportunities for psychological research that may be impossible at local institutions. Benefits include collaboration with other disciplines, access to adequate numbers of participants, shared research infrastructure, and access to longitudinal cohorts. Barriers include cost, standardization and quality control, competition for limited resources, and authorship and publication challenges.

Conclusions: The inclusion of psychological research as a task of the multidisciplinary cooperative group contributes to a transdisciplinary science focused on cure of childhood cancer followed by optimal quality of survivorship. The focus of this research for the next decade should be on the development of intervention studies that address acute problems, lessen the impact of late effects of treatment, and ultimately prevent these effects by better diagnostic classification and targeted treatment. This focus should ultimately lead to translation of intervention research findings to standard of care in the larger childhood cancer community.