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With the increase in scientific knowledge and understanding of cancer, more and more Texans are living with, through and beyond cancer. In 2003, approximately 10.5 million Americans alive had been diagnosed with cancer, with an estimated 750,000 in Texas alone. These individuals are considered cancer survivors, identified by the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Cancer Society as those who have been diagnosed with cancer and the people in their lives who are affected by the diagnosis.
Although survivors confront many complex issues, these survivorship concerns generally fall into five major categories – physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and economic. With survival rates of many cancers increasing, particularly the four most common cancers, prostate, lung, breast, colorectal, more research funding and support structures have been directed toward the evaluation and improvement of post-treatment care and support for this growing segment of the population.
The Texas Cancer Council highlighted the importance of this growing trend by including survivorship as one of its five goals. To meet the demands of survivorship in Texas, the Texas Cancer Plan details the following objectives:
Objective A – Increase knowledge of survivorship issues for the general public, cancer survivors, health care professionals, and policymakers.
Objective B – Increase the availability of effective programs and policies addressing cancer survivorship.
Objective C – Increase access to quality care and services for cancer survivors in Texas.
The texascancersurvivor.info Web portal aims to address the objective of increasing Texans' knowledge of survivorship issues by providing links to pre-screened survivorship Web sites and publications. The sites have been reviewed for quality using a predetermined criteria and are organized by survivorship topic and cancer type. These links include Web sites based in Texas as well as those found across the country that contain information or services that are available to Texans. Texas based sites are identified by a small Texas icon.
Links were reviewed by the Goal V Subcommittee of the Texas Comprehensive Cancer Control Coalition for survivorship content and categorized into over thirty emotional, physical and practical/economic topics, such as finding support, pain management and insurance. Texas Cancer Information would like to thank this group of dedicated professionals for their ongoing support of this initiative.
Select a Survivorship Topic and a Cancer Type and click on the Submit Query button below.
The link selection criteria for texascancersurvivor.info includes:
- Cancer Related
- Educational/Informational - Purpose is primarily educational and/or informational. (Site is not overtly commercial. However, site may charge shipping and handling costs to cover mailing or production of materials.)
- Responsibility - institution, organization, author, or sponsor is clearly identified.
- Content - Content should have sources of information and credentials of authors indicated. Caveats and disclaimers are included and easily found. Dates that content was posted and updated should be indicated and easily found. Site is user-friendly and provides information that is relevant to the audience.
- Credibility of Information - for example, reputation of hosting entity, accuracy of information, and/or scientific basis - expert opinion vs. systematic controlled studies, etc. as appropriate to subject matter.
- Accessible - The site is consistently available and maintained. The site is accessible to the commonly used browsers, i.e., Internet Explorer and Firefox.
- Feedback - feedback mechanism is easily available to users whether by phone, fax or e-mail.
If you would like to suggest a link for inclusion in texascancersurvivor.info, please e-mail links@texascancer.info. All proposed links are reviewed according to the predetermined criteria above to assess the overall quality and usefulness of the information found on each site.