The Problem

“Not every person who goes through cancer therapy has physiologic changes that interfere with their lives, but everybody who goes through that experience has some emotional change that takes place, or some psychological change.” Anna T. Meadows, MD, Director of the Cancer Survivorship Program at The Children’s Hospital of Phila­delphia

Introduction

Striving for More, Inc is a nonprofit organization that was created in response to the alarming lack of psychological and emotional support available in hospitals for children with cancer.

The following is an excerpt in the Executive Summary for the book entitled Cancer Care for the Whole Patient: Meeting Psychosocial Health Needs[1] published by the Institute of Health.

Today, it is not possible to deliver good-quality cancer care without using existing approaches, tools, and resources to address patients’ psychosocial health needs. All patients with cancer and their families should expect and receive cancer care that ensures the provision of appropriate psychosocial health services. 

Facts

  • Approximately 12,500 children are diagnosed with cancer annually in the United States.
  • About 4,000 children die from cancer each year.  That's 11 children every single day, every single year.
  • Childhood cancer survival rates are rising. However, overall incidence rates of childhood cancer have increased by 33 % since 1971.
  • The intensive treatment for childhood cancer is often lengthy, and always time-consuming. Some diagnoses are treated outpatient for over three years; others require lengthy inpatient stays.
  • The treatment includes painful procedures and numerous side effects.
  • Children often feel emotional distress as a result of confinement, being away from their friends, apprehension before medical procedures and they sometimes worry about the severity of their disease and even the possibility of their death.

The Problem

Although children are often surrounded by loved ones when they are ill, they frequently hide their feelings of fear and anxiety from those they love in an attempt to protect them. Qualified emotional support should be an integral part of treatment, ensuring that both child and family have the resources they need to get through this often terrifying journey.

Insurance companies do not easily reimburse this type of emotional support. Unless you live in a community with a large children’s hospital where corporate benefactors or grants have been dedicated to fund emotional support, families are left to fend for themselves when it comes to the emotional well being of their children.

After personally experiencing the dramatic gaps that exist in services today, Diane Moore founded Striving for More to pursue dedicated funding for support resources - so that no family has to endure childhood cancer alone.

 

[1] Committee on Psychosocial Services to Cancer Patients/Families in a Community Setting. Cancer Care for the Whole Patient: Meeting Psychosocial Health Needs. Washington, D.C., 2008

Did You Know?

Childhood cancers are the #1 disease killer of children — more than asthma, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, and pediatric AIDS combined.