Haruka Ono, Yuko Ogawa, Miwa Ozawa, Chikako Shimizu, Akiko Higuchi, Keizou Horibe and Shin-ichi Suzuki
Graduate School of Human Sciences, Waseda University, Japan Faculty of Human Sciences, Waseda University, Japan St. Lukes International Hospital, Japan Breast and Medical Oncology Division, National Cancer Center Hospital, Japan Children��?s Cancer Association of Japan, Japan Clinical Research Center, National Hospital Organization Nagoya Medical Center, Japan
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Arch Cancer Res
Childhood cancer survivors (CCS) have some difficulty in their social life because of late effect or staying long term at hospital. In Japan, there are several studies of CCS’s needs; however, few studies explored the perception of unmet social needs on the various domain. The purpose of this study was to investigate unmet social needs of adolescent and young adult CCS in Japan. One hundred twenty CCS (Age: M = 23.25, SD = 6.38; Age at diagnosis: M = 7.44, SD = 4.33; Male: N = 50, 42%) completed the questionnaire. The domain of unmet social needs of CCS was about information, counseling, support system in their life stage. We calculated the ratio of unmet social needs and conducted a series of chi-square test to analyze the association between the 3 groups of age at diagnosis (preschool, elemental school and junior high school) and unmet social needs. Significant association was not found. Information for Genetic susceptibility (31%) and information for the future of their own was the highest unmet needs (31%). Counseling for physical appearance was the highest unmet need (27%). As a support system, the highest unmet need in a high school was being educated in hospital school or visiting school without transferring (61%). The highest unmet need of support system at workplace was eliminating social prejudices and misunderstanding to cancer (57%). These results indicate that CCS have unmet information needs of their future related to cancer. It is necessary to provide information related to individual CCS’s future and counseling for CCS. In addition, our study found that there are still much misunderstanding and prejudice to cancer. It is also important that healthy people improve their knowledge of cancer.
Haruka Ono is a clinical psychologist and doctoral student of Waseda University in Japan. She studies clinical psychology for children especially based on cognitive behavioral therapy, during which time she has authored about 4 peer-reviewed reports about psychosocial problem among children. She is writing her doctoral dissertation on cancer education program for children in school. Her research project is a collaborative research with St. Luke's International Hospital. Until now, she has researched psychosocial problem or support strategy for mental health and developmental disability of children in various stages of development. On these backgrounds, she found that the change of environment causes several serious problems for children. Affecting with cancer is one of a change of environment, thus Ms. Ono considered that it is important that children have enough knowledge and chance to think about cancer.
E-mail: haruka.ono7@gmail.com
Spanish 
Chinese 
Russian 
German 
French 
Japanese 
Portuguese 
Hindi 