Ongoing Global Health Projects

Collaborations in Zambia
Brenda Edwards was one of several NCI and National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) participants in a scientific site visit (July 27-29, 2016) of grantee Charles Wood (University of Nebraska, Lincoln) and his research colleagues in Lusaka, Zambia. The 3-day meeting was coordinated by Vaurice Starks on behalf of the NIH Office of AIDS Research and focused on progress in international collaborations among virologists, notably the Kaposi Sarcoma HHV8 project. Dr. Wood and his team held a pre-site visit grantsmanship workshop for colleagues in Zambia and Tanzania. Visits to the cancer hospital, pediatric cancer facility, and research labs in Lusaka augmented updates and discussions regarding research projects. Brenda gave a short presentation on global cancer registry surveillance activities that stimulated considerable discussions with clinicians involved with hospital-based cancer registries and other stakeholders contributing data to the Zambia Cancer Registry. The NCI Center for Global Health provides funding through the UICC to support the national registry staff in Zambia and their work with the African Cancer Registry Network.

Collaborations in Poland and Eastern Europe on Tobacco Control
Mark Parascandola participated as a speaker at and a co-organizer of the Tobacco Cessation Workshop for Health Professionals in Eastern Europe, which took place October 25–26, 2016, at the Marii Sklodowskiej-Curie Cancer Institute and Hospital in Warsaw, Poland. The workshop involved approximately 30 key participants from Armenia, Georgia, Serbia, Romania, Macedonia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Poland. The workshop focused on tobacco cessation methods and the role of health professionals in tobacco control, as well as identifying research needs and opportunities across the region. Outcomes of the workshop include development of a tobacco control health professional network in Eastern Europe and a forthcoming summary paper to review the state of tobacco cessation capacity across the region. Additional activities planned for 2017 include a collaboration with the Polish Hospital Federation to support tobacco control programs in hospitals. These activities are part of an ongoing series of collaborations between the US and Poland focused on innovation and biomedical science.

International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (ITC Project)
The Tobacco Control Research Branch (TCRB) continues to support the ITC Project, which conducts systematic evaluation of key policies of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control at the population level in more than 28 countries and includes more than 150 tobacco control collaborators. In 2016, the ITC project produced 22 published papers (as well as one paper in press and 12 submitted manuscripts) and 32 presentations (three invited presentations, four scientific meeting presentations, one invited public lecture, four symposia, and 20 poster presentations).

Cooperative Agreement Between NCI and Genentech to Validate PRO-CTCAE Translations
A key accelerator of widespread implementation of Patient-Reported Outcomes version of the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (PRO-CTCAE™) in both international and US trials is the availability of linguistically and culturally adapted outcome measures. NCI and Genentech have recently signed a cooperative agreement to develop additional language translations of PRO-CTCAE. Efforts to reach this agreement have been in progress for almost a year, and important contributors to these negotiations include Lori Minasian of the Division of Cancer Prevention, Bob Wagner of NCI’s Technology Transfer Center, as well as colleagues at the FDA. New languages being linguistically validated include Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, French, and Chinese. Also included in the agreement are studies to establish the between-country universality of the English, Spanish, Italian, French, and German language versions for use in countries where more than one language is spoken (e.g., Swiss Italian, French Canadian). Genentech has contracted with Corporate Translations Inc. to perform the work, and NCI is collaborating closely with both organizations to provide technical expertise with respect to the linguistic validation methods for PRO-CTCAE. By early 2018, it is anticipated that PRO-CTCAE will be available in more than 20 languages, thereby supporting the global conduct of cancer clinical trials. For more information, please contact Sandra Mitchell at mitchlls@mail.nih.gov.

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Global Health Research and Training Initiatives

CanReg5 Training
Damali Martin, Brenda Edwards, and Gonçalo Forjaz planned a basic training workshop for use of CanReg5 cancer registry software for cancer registrars from the Caribbean. This workshop was done under the IARC Caribbean Regional Cancer Registry Hub, which is part of the Global Initiative for Cancer Registration (GICR) in developing countries. The overall goal of the workshop was to provide basic and detailed training for cancer registrars in the use of CanReg5 and to improve their skills and enhance the quality of the collected data. The workshop was held from November 28 – 30 at NCI’s Shady Grove Campus. Attendees from five Caribbean countries (Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, Jamaica and Bahamas) participated in the workshop. Dr. Forjaz and Ms. Beatriz Carballo, a former cancer registrar and currently a data analyst at the Córdoba Cancer Registry, Argentina, served as faculty for the workshop. Drs. Edwards and Martin also presented on topics that covered Global Cancer Registry-Center Surveillance and Descriptive Epidemiology, respectively. Towards the end of the workshop, the group planned future activities, including participation in the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR) annual conference.

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Noteworthy Reports

Monograph 21: The Economics of Tobacco and Tobacco Control
This monograph, developed by the Tobacco Control Research Branch (TCRB) in collaboration with the World Health Organization, is the 21st volume in the series of monographs on tobacco control produced by NCI. It examines the current research and evidence base surrounding the economics of tobacco control—including tobacco use; tobacco growing, manufacturing, and trade; tobacco product taxes and prices; and tobacco control policies and other interventions to reduce tobacco use and its consequences—and the economic implications of global tobacco control efforts. The monograph was recently released and is now available online.

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Meeting Reports

International Congress of Behavioral Medicine
Bill Klein, Paige Green, Susan Czajkowski, and Jerry Suls attended the International Congress of Behavioral Medicine, held December 7-10, 2016, in Melbourne, Australia. Dr. Green chaired an invited symposium titled “Cancer in the Context of Comorbidity and Multimorbidity: Perspectives from Behavioral Medicine.” Invited presenters in that symposium included NCI grantee Graham Colditz of Washington University, Joost Dekker from VU University Medical Center in the Netherlands, and Jon Emery of the University of Melbourne. Dr. Suls served as an invited discussant. Dr. Klein also served as an invited discussant at two other symposia. One panel covered new methods of health behavior change and the other focused on colorectal cancer screening. Dr. Czajkowski spoke and co-chaired two symposia as well.

International Society of Geriatric Oncology
Paige Green attended the annual International Society of Geriatric Oncology (SIOG) conference, held November 17-19, 2016, in Milan, Italy. A total of 457 people from 42 countries attended, and there were 29 scientific sessions, according to a post-conference write-up.

International Conference on Physical Activity and Public Health
Rick Troiano participated in the International Conference on Physical Activity and Public Health, November 16-19, 2016, in Bangkok, Thailand. Dr. Troiano co-chaired and served as a discussant for a session titled “Population Surveillance of Physical Activity: Progress Made but What Does the Future Look Like?” He also co-chaired the session “Advances and Findings from National Surveillance of Physical Activity across Multiple Countries,” in which he presented a talk about the cloud-based access to the wrist accelerometer data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Cancer Quality Council of Ontario Meeting on Sustainable Cancer Care
Ashley Wilder Smith participated in a one-day meeting, "Sustainable Cancer Care: Strengthening the System for Future Generations," in Toronto, Canada, on November 16, 2016. Dr. Smith presented a talk titled, “Considering the Patient Perspective on the Value of Cancer Care."

Seventh Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP7)
Debbie Winn, Mark Parascandola, and Mirjana Djordjevic attended the Seventh Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP7) of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), which was held in Greater Noida, India, November 7–12, 2016, as part of the US delegation. The conference serves as one of the most important global tobacco control events because it reviews the implementation of and progress on the WHO FCTC. The delegates observed the main sessions of the COP and participated in various side meetings. Dr. Parascandola participated in a panel discussion to mark the release of a new report on smokeless tobacco and public health in India, published by the India Ministry of Health and Family Welfare with technical assistance from NCI. Drs. Winn, Djordjevic, and Parascandola also participated in a side-meeting at the Indian Council for Medical Research to provide input to research plans for the new WHO FCTC Global Knowledge Hub on Smokeless Tobacco.

Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) Meeting
Paul Jacobsen, Ashley Wilder Smith, Julia Rowland, and Mark Parascandola attended the UICC World Cancer Congress Meeting in Paris, France, October 31 - November 3, 2016. The conference is acknowledged by the global cancer community as the leading international event for cancer organizations. Dr. Jacobsen was a symposium presenter for a panel on integrating the psychosocial domain into cancer care and presented his paper “Promoting Psycho-Oncology for Patient Well-Being: International Challenges and Opportunities.” He also met with met with key leaders in the field to discuss their research and policy activities. Dr. Smith participated in a symposium examining cross-country comparisons in cancer care for adolescents and young adults (AYA). Data were presented from the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Dr. Smith gave an oral presentation titled, “Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Cancer Care and Outcomes: Findings from the AYA HOPE Study.” Future collaboration with the scientists in the panel are being planned, including an effort to conduct future combined analyses with international health services and epidemiologic data on adolescents and young adults with cancer. Dr. Rowland was one of five speakers in a special session held on cancer survivorship. Attention was focused, in particular, on how best to translate the experience of delivering survivorship care in the more highly resourced nations for application in low- and middle-income nations that may be experiencing for the first time a growth in the number of their citizens who survive long-term after cancer. The challenge of equity, a theme that ran across the congress, in the face of limited resources was used to generate creative, out-of-the-box solutions with the potential to leverage people and programs already established in some countries. The importance of having key—and well-positioned---champions to propel change was another theme that cross-cut the congress. Dr. Parascandola participated along with other NCI staff as a faculty member in the NCI Implementation Science Master Course before the conference and also participated in a workshop co-sponsored by Cancer Research UK, the American Cancer Society, and NCI to develop research on the economics of tobacco control in low- and middle- income countries.

PROMIS Health Organization (PHO) Meeting
Sandra Mitchell attended the PROMIS Health Organization International meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, October 23-24, 2016, which was held in tandem with the International Society of Quality of Life (ISOQOL) meeting. The PHO meeting theme, “Measuring Health Outcomes around the World,” focused on efforts by adopters in more than a dozen countries and the US to test, refine, and implement Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS®) measures in research and clinical practice settings. A wide range of important topics were presented, including cultural adaptation and measurement invariance testing of PROMIS measures across languages/cultures/countries, implementation of PROMIS measures in routine practice, and considerations around PROMIS score interpretation (normative values, clinically meaningful differences) and resultant actionability to improve clinical management. To access slides from the plenary sessions, visit http://www.promishealth.com/conference-plenary-presentation-slides.

International Society of Quality of Life Meeting
Sandra Mitchell attended the annual research meeting of the International Society of Quality of Life (ISOQOL) in Copenhagen, Denmark, October 19-22, 2016. She and the team who have been testing and implementing the Patient-Reported Outcomes Version of the Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (PRO-CTCAE™) delivered a symposium, and a number of PRO-CTCAE adopters presented posters reporting their work. Dr. Mitchell also met with PRO-CTCAE collaborators who are implementing PRO-CTCAE in cancer clinical trials and routine practice, including adopters in the United Kingdom, representatives from the Danish Cancer Society who are implementing PRO-CTCAE within the AmbuFlex electronic data capture system, and teams from Germany, Japan, and Sweden who are engaged in testing PRO-CTCAE in various study contexts.

International Psycho Oncology Society (IPOS) Congress
Paul Jacobsen and Julia Rowland attended the International Psycho Oncology Society (IPOS) World Congress in Dublin, Ireland, October 17-21, 2016. At the conference, Dr. Jacobsen participated in 2 days of meetings with the IPOS Board as a non-voting invited director. He also served as a discussant on two symposia, “Growing and Developing Psychosocial Oncology Programs Worldwide: Challenges and Opportunities” and “Severe Fatigue in Cancer Survivors,” and presented a paper on “Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Targeted Cancer Therapy-related Fatigue.” Dr. Rowland served as one of four speakers at a session on informal cancer caregiving. She compared findings from 2005 data on caregiver health and function drawn from CanCORS with that from the Caregiving in the US 2015 survey conducted by the National Alliance for Caregiving and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP)’s Public Policy Institute. Findings from this and other talks in the session highlighted the continuing lack of attention to the complex needs of family members and others who serve in these critical caregiving roles, often with little acknowledgement, training or support. Data globally suggest their numbers will only increase in the decades to come, due to the growing population of survivors secondary to greater uptake of cancer control initiatives, and the aging of the worlds’ population.

Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Center (VCCC) Survivorship Conference and The Victorian Psycho-Oncology Research Conference
Dr. Rowland was the keynote speaker at the newly opened (August 2016) VCCC’s Inaugural Cancer Survivorship Conference, held October 13, 2016, in Melbourne, Australia. The meeting, which brought 350 clinicians, researchers, administrators, and advocates to the center, was an opportunity to raise awareness about the long-term needs of survivors and their families and also bring attention to the ‘virtual’ survivorship program now supported by the VCCC in an effort to reach Australia’s broadly dispersed population. It is of note that the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia (COSA) recently launched a model for survivors’ care that espouses a needs-based triage system designed for delivery across Australia’s single-payer platform. Dr. Rowland was also a featured speaker at the 4th Victorian Psycho-Oncology Research Conference, held October 14 at the VCCC. Here she reviewed the progress made---and challenges that remain---in meeting the recommendations set out in the Institute of Medicine report Cancer Care for the Whole Patient: Meeting Psychosocial Health Needs.

Asia Pacific Conference on Tobacco or Health
Mark Parascandola attended the Asia Pacific Conference on Tobacco or Health, which took place September 23–25, 2016, in Beijing, China. This event is the premier tobacco control conference for the Asia-Pacific region, providing an opportunity for experts in tobacco control to share experiences and to discuss strategies for the implementation of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Dr. Parascandola participated in the Tobacco-Free Cities Partnership workshop, organized by Georgia State University. He also met with the China-US Smoke-Free Workplace team and partners to discuss the future of this initiative and visited the National Cancer Institute at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences to discuss ongoing collaborations on tobacco and lung cancer.

Preventing Overdiagnosis Conference
Paul Doria-Rose attended the Preventing Overdiagnosis Conference in Barcelona, Spain, September 20-22, 2016. He presented about opportunities for overdiagnosis research within the Population-Based Research Optimizing Screening through Personalized Regimens (PROSPR) initiative; the reissuance RFA for PROSPR is currently posted, with applications due February 9, 2017. Other NCI presenters included Rocky Feuer, who led a workshop focused on methods for measuring overdiagnosis in cancer, and Wynne Norton, who led a session focused on de-implementation, with the goal of exploring multilevel strategies for reducing overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

International Conference on Communication in Healthcare
Sylvia Chou attended the International Conference on Communication in Healthcare (ICCH) meeting at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, September 7-10, 2016. An international interdisciplinary conference, ICCH brings together researchers, trainers and clinicians working to improve communication in health care settings. Dr. Chou gave an oral presentation on a recently completed study on goals of care communication among oncology teams caring for patients on clinical trials.

Several Collaborator Meetings in London
In September, Sarah Kobrin attended three different meetings in London. First, she met with members of the Health Behaviour Research Center at University College London, where she gave a talk on using health behavior theory in intervention research and also discussed how we fund health behavior research in the US. She also met with the staff of the UK Population Sciences Working Group, of which she is the only non-UK member. Finally, she met with staff at Cancer Research UK to talk about her work on the US data from the Awareness and Beliefs about Cancer (ABC) Survey, which was first funded in the UK as well as five other countries. Kate Rendle, who led the analyses of the US data, participated by phone, and Sammy Quiafe, who is the primary UK collaborator on this project, presented preliminary analyses of differences between US and UK attitudes and beliefs about specific cancers, signs and symptoms of those cancers, and possible barriers to seeking help for those symptoms.

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Upcoming Events

Workshop on Capacity Building for Cancer Research
Damali Martin will be presenting a lecture, titled “Getting Grants,” at the Workshop on Capacity Building for Cancer Research in Africa in Cape Town, South Africa, January 17-18, 2017. The workshop is being held in conjunction with the AACR International Conference on New Frontiers in Cancer Research, January 18-22. 2017.

Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco 23rd Annual Meeting
Mark Parascandola, Mirjana Djordjevic, Rachel Grana Mayne, and Minal Patel will attend the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco 23rd Annual Meeting, March 8–11, 2017, in Florence, Italy. This meeting enables researchers at every career stage to discuss new research and scientific topics related to nicotine and tobacco control and is attended by many Tobacco Control Research Branch grantees. Two abstracts related to the Tobacco Control Research Branch’s Smokefree.gov initiative have been selected as poster presentations: “Associations between Engagement and Cessation Outcomes in the SmokefreeTXT Program: A Growth Mixture Modeling Analysis” and “Predictors of Dropout from a SMS Text-based Smoking Cessation Intervention Program.” Dr. Djordjevic will serve as a discussant for two symposia: “Emerging Methods for Characterization of New and Manipulated Tobacco Products” and “Product Standards for Cigarettes: Models to Achieve Maximum Public Health Benefit.” Dr. Patel will present two posters about research on adolescent and young adult cigarette smoking conducted with NCI and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) collaborators: “Smoking and Weight Status in the United States: Understanding the Relationship of Cigarette Smoking Trajectories through Adolescence and Weight Status In Young Adulthood” and “Understanding Characteristics Related to Smoking Initiation during Adolescence and Young Adulthood among a US Cohort.”

Cancer Research UK Collaborations
In collaboration with other members of the Behavioral Research Program (BRP), Bill Klein is partnering with Cancer Research UK (CRUK) to establish an exchange program for BRP’s Cancer Prevention Fellows program, a joint Sandpit event in April 2017, and a BRP team visit to CRUK headquarters in England in 2017. In addition, Linda Nebeling is serving as a member of CRUK’s Catalyst Award Panel. The panel recently reviewed applications for CRUK’s Population Research Catalyst Award and made selection recommendations to the Population Research Committee. Based on these recommendations, the committee awarded funding to one applicant. The purpose of the funding is to build capacity and international collaboration in population research and cancer prevention.

International Conference on Ambulatory Monitoring of Physical Activity and Movement (ICAMPAM)
Rick Troiano is leading NCI’s planning committee for the International Conference on Ambulatory Monitoring of Physical Activity and Movement (ICAMPAM), which will be hosted at the NIH campus, June 21-23, 2017. The call for abstracts for ICAMPAM has been released and registration will open in January. More information about the meeting can be found at https://www.ismpb.org/ under ICAMPAM Congress.

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