Dear Navigators, Social Workers, Administrators, and Clinical Staff,
In addition to the obligatory orange and black decorations of October, it’s also the time of year to don your pink in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month! The progress we have made as a nation in elevating the importance of regular breast cancer screenings, funding research, and supporting breast cancer survivors has had a direct impact on our ability to increase and improve survivorship.
To recognize our progress and encourage further strides, we offer this issue dedicated to the subject of breast cancer. Here we present articles that span the treatment continuum. In the community outreach arena, Lisa Schlage and Cristi Radford, MS, CGC, contribute their work entitled “Addressing the Needs of Previvors Struggling to Access Screening and Recommended Interventions.” In the active treatment arena, we have many contributions to include “Chemotherapy Can Be Spared in Many Patients with Early Breast Cancer: Devil Is in the Details,” “Less Is More: 6 Months of Trastuzumab Treatment Equivalent to 12 Months in HER2-Positive Breast Cancer,” and “Breast Cancer Genetic Testing: Can It Help in Making More Informed Decisions?” And to address palliative care, I offer thoughts in my article “The Value of Palliative Care Early in the Treatment Process.”
Also in this issue, we debut a new department called Scenarios in Navigation with a contribution by Maria Malloy, RN, BSN, OCN, CBCN, entitled “Moving It Forward – Life After the Diagnosis.”
We hope this issue proves valuable to your navigation practice. As always, thank you for allowing us to serve you and for your loyal readership.