Meeting the educational and psychosocial needs produced by a diagnosis of pediatric/adolescent cancer

Abstract

Childhood cancer affects not only children with the illness, but their families and their communities as well. Both children with cancer and their parents have need of complete, honest, and regularly updated medical information at their own level of understanding. Children with cancer and their parents also need psychosocial support to help them cope with the impact of childhood cancer on their daily lives, family dynamics, and interactions in their communities. Candlelighters, treatment centers, community organizations such as the American Cancer and Leukemia Societies, and the Office of Cancer Communications of the National Cancer Institute are among those groups meeting these needs with mutual-support groups, educational programs, special libraries, and written and audiovisual materials.