The 28th PanCare meeting took place in Budapest on the 12 – 14 October 2022 hosted by the Department of Pediatrics, Semmelweis University together with Érintettek support organisation
125 healthcare professionals, childhood cancer survivors and family members attended. A new and exciting development were the four free workshops held before the official meeting opened. Each workshop was designed to build connections and knowledge for members of the PanCare community.
During the PanCare survivor’s workshop participants received presentations on the work carried out by Youth Cancer Europe (YCE), CCI-Europe and PanCare. In addition to this, survivours were introduced to the new project coordinated by CCI-Europe and YCE: EU-CAYAS-NET, which is the EU Network of Youth Cancer Survivors which is funded by the EU4Health programme of Horizon Europe. EU-CAYAS-NET will improve the quality of life of childhood, adolescent and young adult cancer survivors through improved social networking and the use of a Platform to improve the links amongst individuals, patients, cancer survivors, and social and health professionals active in cancer prevention and care across the Union. The network will bring together organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and cancer care institutions and create a Union-wide platform to support the promotion of targeted actions and initiatives, covering areas which are of demonstrated benefit to the quality of life of young cancer survivors.
The PanCare workshop for parents and caregivers focused on the empowerment of parents and the role of parents in helping their child (and themselves) negotiate the journey from childhood to adulthood following treatment for childhood cancer. Everyone involved agreed on the value of sharing experiences and knowledge and the importance of the voice of parents and carers in determining future research and care provision in the long term follow up of childhood cancer.
Nurses and allied healthcare professionals took with this workshop the opportunity to discuss the formation of a new PanCare/SIOPE working group for nurses aiming to develop late effects nursing within Europe. Hannah Greene introduced the competency framework being developed in the UK for nurses working in long term follow up and finally Vigdís Hrönn Viggósdóttir and Hanne Lie, led a discussion on the use of communication skills to support behaviour change.
The last workshop was aimed at healthcare professionals and young researchers new to the field of late effects and long-term follow-up care. This workshop previously held as the PanCare Educational Day was led by Charlotte Demoor and Claire Berger. Discussions included the value of childhood cancer registries for research on long-term follow-up, knowledge of subsequent primary neoplasms and how healthcare professionals can support childhood cancer survivors adopt a healthy lifestyle.
The PanCare meeting continued with a variety of presentations from researchers and non-governmental organisations and discussions focused of the provision of care and ways of increasing collaboration and support for the widening of provision of childhood cancer follow up across Europe. Presentations from representatives from Hungary, Poland ,Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Slovenia gave us a good insight in how long term follow up care is organised in these countries and gave room for discussions how to help each other in strengthening care across Europe. Lastly we heard updates from all PanCare projects currently going on and other developments in research and long-term follow-up care.
We would like to thank the local organizing committee, including Professor Gabor Kovacs, Director of the 2nd Department of Pediatrics, Zsuzsanna Jakab from the Hungarian Childhood Cancer Registry, Gergely Krivan, President of the Hungarian Pediatric Oncology Network and Erika Borzekine Cserhati and Anita Keresztes chairs of the parents group Erintettek for making this very succesfull 29th PanCare meeting possible.
Our next meeting will be online in May with a further face to face meeting in Belgium in September 2023. We look forward to seeing you then.
Emma Potter and Ana Amariutei