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research New grant cycle includes a study to help families discuss end of life issues The American Cancer Society’s research program funds projects that study how to prevent cancer, how it develops, how to help people coping with it, and how it can be cured. With five main categories (behavioral, molecular biology, drug development, epidemiology, and cellular biology) our grants are used to learn how we can ease the cancer burden in people’s lives and, ultimately, eradicate the disease.  With our newest grant cycle, starting August 1, the Society is investing approximately 3.8 million dollars in Michigan and Indiana research projects alone. One of these projects is led by Cynthia Bell at Indiana University in Indianapolis (shown right). Cynthia is interested in the behavioral impacts of cancer and will study how to improve the quality of life for adolescents, and family members of adolescents, dying from cancer.
Her topic is hard-hitting, but one that she knows is needed from her experiences as a home care nurse. She witnessed families become isolated because they were unwilling or didn’t know how to talk to each other about death when medical treatment could no longer help. As a result, the young cancer patients’ quality of life would drop significantly and families could not enjoy the time that they had left together. "We’ve made some great advances in medications and things we can do but sometimes we need to learn better how we can address the hardships that families have to go through when they’re experiencing cancer, the difficulties emotionally," Cynthia explained. "It’s almost like a visual release that you see when it’s finally out and you finally talk." As part of her Doctoral program, she will use her Society grant to study when the topic of death should be introduced to a family and how to facilitate these discussions. Cynthia, who was awarded a grant in her Master’s program, is very grateful to have additional support from the Society. "It is so nice to have someone that believes in you and is willing to fund you so that you can concentrate on doing the research," she said. Her grant will be funded until 2008. Once her research is complete, Cynthia’s goal is to make an impact on the medical profession by helping doctors and nurses implement her strategies to improve patients’ end of life. "What I’d really want is for everyone to be cured of cancer, the reality is that doesn’t always happen," she explained. "For those people, I want to make this process as peaceful as possible. I want the kids that are going through it to be able to continue to live until they die." To learn more about the American Cancer Society research program, visit www.cancer.org or call 800-ACS-2345. | |
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