Community Building to Address Cancer Distress Screening and Care

Distress has been recommended as the “sixth vital sign” to be assessed at regular intervals during routine cancer care (Bultz 2005). Reports of distress vary from 22.8 percent (VanHoose 2015) to 61.6 percent (Graves 2007). However, debate continues about when and how to assess and treat distress. The proposed activities will encourage engagement and collaboration of cancer survivors, caregivers, healthcare providers, and researchers to perform a gap analysis and generate comparative effectiveness research questions that will improve distress screening and, ultimately, cancer survivorship.