2024 Champion’s Prize: Helping Pennsylvania Survivors

In this first update since the 2024 Survivorship Champion’s Prize was awarded in October, the Childhood Cancer Survivorship Program at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and Children’s Hospital shares how the Prize is making a difference in their survivorship services.

“Thanks to the generosity of the Stewart family, the funds awarded through the Survivorship Champion’s Prize have been used for enhancing the Childhood Cancer Survivorship Program at Penn State Children’s Hospital in several domains,” says Program Director Smita Dandekar, MBBS, MD.

She expanded on some of the details:

Supporting Survivors: The Penn State program has started building a catalogue of resources within the community to connect survivors with access to local support and services. The Childhood Cancer Survivorship Program’s social worker has begun developing a Psychosocial Resource Guide with a list of mental health and school resources (IEP/504). They have also developed a comprehensive list of local and national camps for survivors and a Scholarship Guide for cancer survivors and affected family members.

Related: Children’s Cancer Cause is now accepting applications for our 2025 College Scholars Program.

Technology: Champion’s Prize money has helped purchase technology for use in the clinic’s research and patient education. A new iPad is enabling clinic staff to conduct electronic surveys for their HPV vaccination project to learn more about vaccination barriers and opportunities for young adult survivors of childhood cancer in rural Pennsylvania.

Establishing a REDCap Database: Dr. Dandekar has submitted an application to their Institutional Review Board (IRB) for establishing a data repository of cancer survivors and/or stem cell transplant survivors treated at Penn State Children’s Hospital that will be used for current and future research projects to study medical and psychosocial outcomes, social determinants of health, health behaviors and quality of life, and associated risk factors. Once approved by the IRB, funds will be used towards the salary of a part-time research coordinator who will work on the database development

Food as Medicine Initiative: A culinary dietitian has been hired to conduct group nutrition education and cooking classes for adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer survivors. The classes will focus on providing information on diet quality and its impact on cardiometabolic health. A portion of the Prize funds will be used for a research study investigating the impact of this program on dietary habits of AYA cancer survivors.

Next steps: In future months, the Program will expand its use of technology to complete surveys during clinic that will be automatically uploaded into a secure research database, and to support families through educational instruction on mitigating late effects. The Childhood Cancer Survivorship Program plans to expand their catalogue of resources and build a virtual library of educational materials about late effects to share with survivors during in-person visits and virtual telemedicine visits.

Dr. Dandekar will share more progress in the next update.

Since its inception in 2020, the Survivorship Champion’s Prize has awarded $95,000 to a total of fourteen prestigious survivorship programs across the country.