The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It conducts research and teaching in medical and biological sciences.
Palliative care is an interdisciplinary medical caregiving approach aimed at optimizing quality of life and mitigating suffering among people with serious, complex, and often terminal illnesses. Within the published literature, many definitions of palliative care exist. The World Health Organization (WHO) describes palliative care as "an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial, and spiritual." In the past, palliative care was a disease specific approach, but today the WHO takes a more broad approach, that the principles of palliative care should be applied as early as possible to any chronic and ultimately fatal illness.
Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center is a cancer research and treatment center located in Buffalo, New York. Founded by surgeon Roswell Park in 1898, the center was the first in the United States to specifically focus on cancer research. The center is usually called Roswell Park in short form. The center, which conducts clinical research on cancer as well as the development new drugs, provides advanced treatment for all forms of adult and pediatric cancer, and serves as a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center is currently the only upstate New York facility to hold the National Cancer Institute designation of "comprehensive cancer center".
UC Davis Medical Center is part of UC Davis Health and a major academic health center located in Sacramento, California. It is owned and operated by the University of California as part of its University of California, Davis campus. The medical center sits on a 142-acre (57 ha) campus located between the Elmhurst, Tahoe Park, and Oak Park residential neighborhoods. The site incorporates the land and some of the buildings of the former Sacramento Medical Center as well as much of the land previously occupied by the California State Fair until its 1967 move to a new location.
Dartmouth Cancer Center (DCC) is a comprehensive cancer center as designated by the National Cancer Institute, with administrative offices located within the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
M. Krishnan Nair was an Indian oncologist. He was the founding director of the Regional Cancer Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, a director of the S.U.T. Institute of Oncology, and Trivandrum Cancer Center(TCC), part of SUT Royal Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) and a professor at the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences & Research in Kochi. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian award of the Padma Shri, in 2001 for his contributions in the cancer care field.
Psycho-oncology is an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of physical, psychological, social, and behavioral aspects of the cancer experience for both patients and caregivers. Also known as psychiatric oncology or psychosocial oncology, researchers and practitioners in the field are concerned with aspects of individuals' experience with cancer beyond medical treatment, and across the cancer trajectory, including at diagnosis, during treatment, transitioning to and throughout survivorship, and approaching the end-of-life. Founded by Jimmie Holland in 1977 via the incorporation of a psychiatric service within the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the field has expanded drastically since and is now universally recognized as an integral component of quality cancer care. Cancer centers in major academic medical centers across the country now uniformly incorporate a psycho-oncology service into their clinical care, and provide infrastructure to support research efforts to advance knowledge in the field.
Patient advocacy is a process in health care concerned with advocacy and support for patients, survivors, and caregivers. The patient advocate may be an individual or an organization, concerned with healthcare standards or with one specific group of disorders. The terms patient advocate and patient advocacy can refer both to individual advocates providing services that organizations also provide, and to organizations whose functions extend to individual patients. Some patient advocates work for the institutions that are directly responsible for the patient's care.
Psychiatric rehabilitation, also known as psych social rehabilitation, and sometimes simplified to psych rehab by providers, is the process of restoration of community functioning and well-being of an individual diagnosed in mental health or emotional disorder and who may be considered to have a psychiatric disability.
Jessie Gruman was a social psychologist active in the movement to incorporate evidence into health care and to help consumers adopt healthier behaviors. Gruman was the founder and president of the Washington, DC-based Center for Advancing Health from 1992 to 2014. She was the author of the book AfterShock: What to Do When the Doctor Gives You — or Someone You Love — a Devastating Diagnosis. She lived in New York City.
The McGrath Foundation is a breast cancer support and education charity in Australia, which raises money to place McGrath Breast Care Nurses in communities across Australia and increase breast health awareness. The charity was founded by Australian cricket player Glenn McGrath and his English-born wife, Jane McGrath, in 2005, following Jane's initial diagnosis and recovery from breast cancer. Jane died on 22 June 2008 at the age of 42.
Barrie Joyce Rabinowitz Cassileth was an American medical sociologist and researcher of complementary medicine and a critic of alternative medicine. She published extensively on alternative cancer treatments.
Hospice care is a type of health care that focuses on the palliation of a terminally ill patient's pain and symptoms and attending to their emotional and spiritual needs at the end of life. Hospice care prioritizes comfort and quality of life by reducing pain and suffering. Hospice care provides an alternative to therapies focused on life-prolonging measures that may be arduous, likely to cause more symptoms, or are not aligned with a person's goals.
The International Myeloma Foundation (IMF) is an American non-profit organization serving patients with myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells in the bone marrow. The IMF also provides support and information for family members, caregivers of myeloma patients, physicians and nurses. The organization is dedicated to improving the quality of life for all myeloma patients by focusing on four key areas: research, education, support, and advocacy.
The Cancer Support Community (CSC) focuses on three areas of support: direct service delivery, research, and advocacy.
Jeanne Quint Benoliel was an American nurse who studied the role of nursing in end-of-life settings. She founded the Ph.D. program at the University of Washington School of Nursing. She was designated a Living Legend of the American Academy of Nursing.
Jimmie Coker Holland was a founder of the field of psycho-oncology. In 1977, she worked with two colleagues to establish a full-time psychiatric service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The program was one of the first of its kind in cancer treatment, and trained its psychologists to specialize in issues specific to people with cancer.
Eileen Skellern FRCN (1923–1980) was an English psychiatric nurse who was involved in pioneering psychosocial and psychotherapeutic methods for treating patients. She helped open up new roles for nurses in mental health work, and demonstrated that they could be equal partners in a team, taking personal responsibility for patient care while collaborating with doctors and playing an important part in new developments in therapeutic treatment. While also taking a lead in education, administration and policy development, she did research and published in medical and nursing journals, and was a member of key committees in her field.
Margaret Ruth McCorkle FAAN, FAPOS was an international leader and award-winning pioneer in oncology nursing. She was the Florence Schorske Wald Professor of Nursing at the Yale School of Nursing.
Kerry Stephen Courneya is a Canadian kinesiologist. As a Full Professor and Canada Research Chair in Physical Activity and Cancer at the University of Alberta, his research focuses on physical activity after a cancer diagnosis.
