Community Clinical Oncology Program

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The merger of the four legacy pediatric cooperative groups to form the Children?s Oncology Group (COG) presents a unique opportunity to serve all children in North America. Our goals are to expand access to innovative clinical and translational research for cancer treatment, prevention and control and to increase the level of participation by CCOPs/MBCCOPs in the mission of the COG. This application supports the COG as a treatment and prevention/control Community Clinical Oncology Program (CCOP) Research Base. The COG will make available to CCOPs/MBCCOPs current treatment protocols with access to investigational agents and special centralized reference laboratories, thus promoting high quality cancer care for children treated in community settings. A high priority has been placed on developing protocols that can be feasibly performed in smaller COG institutions, which include most of our affiliated CCOPs. COG will encourage CCOP investigators to participate in all aspects of the Group?s scientific mission in addition to enrolling patients on study. The COG will provide continuing training and support for CCOP institutional personnel including clinical research associates and oncology nurses, and will ensure that all CCOPs maintain high quality assurance standards for membership, accrual, and institutional performance. The Cancer Control Committee (CCC) administers the COG cancer prevention and control research program. Its mission is to improve the quality of care and survivorship for children with cancer, to ensure access to state-of-the-art cancer therapy for traditionally underserved groups (including minority and adolescent/young adult populations), and to develop hypothesis-driven prevention and control research for children. The membership of the CCC is diverse and includes the clinical disciplines of hematology/oncology, surgery, radiation therapy, oncology nursing, and other physician specialists for infectious diseases, pediatric cardiology and pulmonology; public health disciplines including epidemiology, health services research, and biostatistics; and behavioral researchers in psychology, sociology and social work. COG cancer control research includes assessment of alternate trial endpoints such as health-related quality-of-life and economic measures; the identification and prevention of treatment-related sequelae; symptom management, pain control and supportive care; and community oncology and outreach.