Survivors Taking Action & Responsibility (STAR)
Staying healthy after treatment
The STAR program at Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center bridges the gap from childhood to young adult care for cancer survivors.
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Approximately 75 percent of children diagnosed with cancer become long-term survivors, thanks to current treatment strategies. This success is a major feat of pediatric medicine, surgery and radiation oncology. As a result, we believe we have a responsibility to provide continued monitoring and care for the late effects of these diseases and treatments. Survivors have the right to expect an organized, systematic and comprehensive follow-up program, one that addresses both the physiologic and psychosocial effects of their treatment. This is the focus of the STAR program at Children’s Memorial Hospital and the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University.
STAR program at Children's Memorial Hospital
Patients are referred to the STAR program five years after diagnosis if they have remained in full clinical remission. We currently see approximately 360 patients annually.
- Kimberley Dilley, MD, MPH, is the full-time physician seeing patients in the STAR clinic and directing the active research program.
- Barbara Lockart, RN, PNP, and Karina Danner-Koptik, RN, MSN, share the program’s nursing responsibilities for patient evaluations and patient education. They also provide expertise to instruct nursing colleagues and to participate in the program's research protocols.
- Meg Crum, LCSW, is the team’s dedicated social worker and is available in clinic to perform assessments and provide needed follow-up for families.
- Tricia Salicete, is our STAR program liaison and research coordinator. She continues to play an important role in clinic management, including supervising clinic scheduling and organizing clinic flow. Additionally, her role has recently expanded to include data manager for the in-house long-term follow-up database as well as research coordinator for all STAR studies. She will play a major role in patient recruitment and data collection for CCSS, and she also manages Institutional Review Board compliance for all ongoing STAR research.
The clinics are held every Wednesday (morning and afternoon) at the Children’s Memorial Outpatient Center in Lincoln Park. The team also offers clinics the second Tuesday of each month at the Children’s Memorial Outpatient Center in Arlington Heights.
What happens during a STAR visit?
During a clinic visit, patients meet with one of the advanced practice nurses as well as the physician. They provide a summary of prior treatments and evaluations as well as counseling about possible late effects due to those treatments.
The social worker discusses survivors’ various psychosocial, educational, insurance or employment needs.
We consult other subspecialty physicians as warranted by the history and physical obtained during the visit. The input of these sub-specialists provides optimal management of any complications that could result in ongoing health problems such as impaired growth or development, infertility, reduced bone density, dyslipidemia or cardiac disease.
Research performed by the STAR team
Research is continually being presented at a variety of national and international meetings, including the Pediatric Academic Societies National Meeting, the International Conference on Long-Term Complications of the Treatment of Children and Adolescents for Cancer, the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research National Meeting, the International Conference on Childhood Bone Health, and the Bone Marrow Transplant Tandem Meeting.
In 2008, we were excited to learn that Children’s Memorial, with Dr. Dilley as principal investigator, was approved to be a participant in the latest patient enrollment for the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS), a national cohort study that has fostered much of the current research progress on understanding late effects of cancer treatment in childhood.
Outreach efforts by the STAR Program
Outreach efforts have included hosting multiple educational symposia sponsored by the National Childhood Cancer Foundation. Additional outreach efforts have been facilitated via the STAR Program’s participation in the Chicago Pediatric Cancer Care Coalition. Creation of a peer mentor program staffed by trained young adult survivors of stem cell transplantation was spearheaded by STAR social work, and an expansion to include oncology survivors is planned.
Specific program goals include:
To provide a comprehensive, systematic evaluation of the potential medical, social and psychological risks which may be unique to survivors of childhood cancers as a result of their disease or treatment.
We strive to focus on prevention and early detection.
- To address these health care needs through an established referral pattern to various medical providers, including but not limited to endocrinologists, cardiologists, psychologists and orthopedists. We also strive to serve as the coordinating service for these multiple specialists, in order to provide vital prevention, early detection and prompt intervention.
- To educate survivors on their changing potential for new or different post-therapy late complications. e promote patient responsibility for awareness and identification of late complications, particularly as they transition to adult healthcare.
- To uphold our promise to remain current on the outcomes of various research studies related to survivors and to deliver clinically relevant results to our patient population. We also commit to ongoing development of and participation in research aimed at improving quality of life for long-term survivors of childhood cancer.
- To educate the community about the potential long-term effects of childhood cancers and their treatment.