This working group is a central part of CANWON, since all the results of the other groups run into this one and results from this working group will be promptly integrated into the other ones.
Working group 4: Development of innovative interventions to enhance work participation of cancer patients
Detailed knowledge about the prognostic factors of work participation of cancer patients, the role of employers in work participation and the economic burden will allow the development of a range of new multidisciplinary strategies, adapted to these identified factors. These strategies will improve the psychosocial situation of cancer survivors by vocational counselling, education, rehabilitation, communication, and supporting work participation. This approach will open new options for research on cancer and work participation and bundle the scattered initiatives over Europe. The inter-European approach of CANWON, which can take patients’, employers’ and national or regional aspects into account in the intervention, will represent the optimal way to systematically develop successful work participation interventions. The endpoints of these programmes (such as work participation, return to work rates and quality of work life) will be investigated by research groups with complementary expertise and facilities.
The main approaches of this WG will be:
- Establishment of a theoretical model of factors affecting work participation in cancer survivors;
- Provision and standardisation of questionnaire tools of work participation, return to work rates and quality of work life; and
- Performance of clinical studies to develop and evaluate interventions for work participation of cancer patients.
The expected outcomes are:
- Development and evaluation of new evidence-based work participation interventions;
- Analysis of primary and secondary endpoints of these work participation interventions as well as their process mechanisms; and
- Involvement of partners (clinics, companies, patient organisations) in the translational activity.
These four Working Groups will make it further possible to achieve logistical objectives of this Action: to exchange and integrate emerging knowledge gained from complementary research fields, to provide evidence for patient support groups, professionals, managers and policy makers; to provide a framework for establishing large and well characterized disease cohorts; to initiate new research projects and programmes at an EU level, and to engage young scientists and clinicians involved in cancer and work participation research in a gender-balanced network.
