Overview:

The Patients and Survivors Program Area investigates methods of measuring and improving quality of life and quality of cancer care.  Its prevention and control research targets patients with cancer, long-term survivors of cancer and family members and caregivers of patients with cancer.  Research includes behavioral intervention research, assessment of quality of life and other health care outcomes, nutritional intervention research and symptom control research.

Goals:

• Reduce avoidable morbidity and mortality among patients with cancer, long-term survivors of cancer and family members and caregivers of patients with cancer
• Understand and improve quality of life outcomes along the developmental phases of the life span continuum (e.g., infants, children, young adult survivors, adult cancer patients and survivors and elderly cancer patients and survivors), including late medical and psychosocial effects
• Develop and improve methods of measuring and evaluating quality of cancer care

Meetings and Events:

• Monthly research conferences and brown bag seminars in collaboration with the School of Public Health
• Postdoctoral fellows’ journal club
• Research-in-progress meetings with fellows
• Monthly tea for program area members and staff with UCLA Division of Cancer Prevention and Control Research
• Monthly working group meeting on psychoneuroimmunology and cancer for investigators to present their work in progress
• Annual retreat with Molecular Epidemiology and Carcinogenesis Program Area and Healthy and At-Risk Populations Program Area

Leadership:

Dr. Patricia A. Ganz, M.D., the Patient and Survivors Program Area Director, is a board-certified medical oncologist who has been conducting psychosocial and quality of life research with cancer patients and survivors since the early 1980s. Ganz holds professorial appointments in the School of Public Health (Health Services) and the School of Medicine (Medicine/Hematology-Oncology). Ganz is a pioneer in the assessment of quality of life in cancer patients, and is active in clinical trials research with the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP). She has focused much of her clinical and research efforts in the areas of breast cancer and its prevention and was a member of the National Cancer Institute Progress Review Group on Breast Cancer. She also directs the UCLA Family Cancer Registry and Genetic Evaluation Program. Her other major areas of research include cancer survivorship and late effects of cancer treatment, cancer in the elderly and quality of care for cancer patients. She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and CA-A Journal for Clinicians. She currently serves on the NCI Board of Scientific Advisors and the Board of Directors of the NSABP Foundation. In 1999 she was awarded an American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professorship for Enhancing Patient Outcomes across the Cancer Control Continuum. In 2006, she was awarded funding to lead UCLA’s Cancer Survivorship Center of Excellence as part of the LIVESTRONG™ Survivorship Center of Excellence Network.

Dr. Lonnie Zeltzer, M.D., the Patients and Survivors Program Area Associate Director, is professor of pediatrics, anesthesiology, psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and directs the Pediatric Pain and Palliative Care programs at UCLA. She studies quality of life outcomes in adult survivors of childhood cancer and is on the steering committee of the North American Childhood Cancer Survivor Study. She also has a pediatric pain research program, including the psychobiology of chronic pain, gender differences in pain, complementary medicine in pain treatment and palliative care. She was the recipient of awards for pediatric pain research from the American Pain Society and the Southern California Cancer Pain Initiative. She received an outstanding physician award from Trinity Hospice, is Chairman of the American Cancer Society’s cancer control and behavioral research committee, is Secretary of the American Pain Society and is on the board of directors of the American Pain Foundation.