This Working Group will coordinate studies on personal (including gender), social and country-specific prognostic factors of cancer patients and work participation using advanced epidemiological technologies.
Working group 1: Prognostic factors of work participation of cancer patients
It will take advantage of the availability of several large and registry-based patient cohorts and the broad scientific expertise in handling large databases. A special focus shall be put on evaluating how gender, personal and disease-related factors interact with social influences to influence the sick leave duration and employment status of cancer survivors. This WG will not be limited to identification of disease-related and demographic outcomes but will proceed to the next level by assessing the significance of country-specific differences including cultural differences regarding work participation and social security systems.
The main approaches will be:
- Establishment of validated and reliable methods and instruments to assess prognostic factors of work participation;
- Harmonization and standardization of new data collection activities; and
- Performance of quantitative and qualitative studies to study the influence of personal, environmental and country-specific prognostic factors of cancer patients on work participation
The main expected outcomes are:
- Establishment of large and well-defined disease cohorts with documented information on personal, environmental and disease-related factors across COST countries;
- Identification of personal, environmental and country-specific prognostic factors of cancer patients affecting work participation thereby conferring an increased risk for unemployment;
- Translation of susceptibility for diminished work participation into a risk assessment for epidemiological and clinical research; and
- Identification of novel targets for new work participation interventions and therapeutic approaches.
