Symposia & Podiums

Psychosocial research in oncology has long recognized that patients' responses to cancer can be conceptualized as falling along a distressresilience continuum.There has been extensive research on the "distress" end of this continuum, in large part due to the ethical imperative of providing distressed patients with appropriate psychological support.However, there is growing interest in the "resilience" aspects of the continuum and a parallel effort to conceptualize, assess, and promote resilience in cancer patients and survivors.This symposium will offer conceptual and practical models for promoting resilience in collaborative cancer care settings.The first presentation will describe a conceptual model of resilience in adults with cancer, which emphasizes that resilience is both an outcome and a dynamic process, and it will discuss the value of explicitly assessing resilience factors in a collaborative care setting.The second presentation will provide an overview and preliminary outcomes of a multi-modal intervention designed to promote resiliency, the "SMART 3-RP Program," and include discussion of logistical challenges of implementing this intervention in a collaborative cancer care setting.The final presentation will offer a model for collaborative (patient-provider) program development of a resilience-building intervention that aims to address the unmet needs of young adult lymphoma survivors.The symposium will conclude with a discussion of "lessons learned" for advancing the integration of psychosocial research on resilience and clinical practice in collaborative cancer care settings.