PHILADELPHIA (June 13, 2019) — Jessica Bauman, MD, an assistant professor in the Department of Hematology/Oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center, recently received a one-year grant from the Palliative Care Research Cooperative (PCRC) Group as a part of its pilot funding program. The funding is supported by a larger annual grant from the National Institute of Nursing Research to the University of Colorado Denver and the PCRC.
Bauman will use her share of the grant to assess the effectiveness and feasibility of integrating palliative care into the treatment plan for head and neck cancer patients. Although she treats patients with several types of cancer, Bauman selected head and neck cancer for her research because the treatments often cause side effects that severely impact quality of life.
“Head and neck cancer is highly survivable, but treatments can lead to pain, difficulty eating and speaking, and changes in appearance, as well as anxiety and depression associated with these concerns,” she said. “My goal is to make managing these symptoms an integral part of the oncology care plan for these patients and people with other cancers.”
The grant will support a pilot test of the feasibility and acceptability of palliative interventions as a routine part of cancer care, and a study of patient coping strategies. It will be the first study of palliative care integrated with treatment for a largely curable cancer.
“This research will demonstrate that palliative care can be a seamless part of the plan to manage side effects and assist with coping at any point in a patient’s treatment,” Bauman said. “Our findings will serve as preliminary evidence for what will hopefully become a larger randomized study in the future.