VOLUME 30 , NUMBER 6 June 1999

Heard on the street

"Cancer-related worries may motivate people to be tested. Whereas generalized symptoms [such as depression] may lead to lethargy, feelings of hopelessness and reduce the likelihood that a person will be tested."

--Caryn Lerman, Georgetown University Medical Center, on people's willingness be tested for cancer-related genes, page 16.

"In the 1980s, all we had to choose from were standard psychological scales that were inappropriate at best and offensive at worst. Today there's more work on quality of life done in cancer than in any other disease."

--David Cella, director of the Center on Outcomes Research and Education at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, on the development of psychological scales that assess quality of life, page 23.

"Most survivors don't need 15 sessions of sex therapy. What they do need is to understand the impact treatment has on sexual functioning and learn how to accommodate those changes."

--Leslie Schover, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, on the kind of support needed by cancer survivors in the area of sexual health, page 32.

"So much of health care--even cancer care--is now done on an outpatient basis. Families have really become the primary health-care providers."

--Susan McDaniel, president of APA's Div. 43 (Family) and professor of psychiatry and family medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine in New York, on the importance of families in the care of cancer patients, page 33.

"Colorectal cancer is the most preventable cancer but the least prevented. Through a safe and relatively easy outpatient procedure, pre-cancerous lesions in the intestine can be detected and re-moved, thereby effectively preventing the development of a highly lethal cancer. However, most people don't have it done."

--William Redd, Mount Sinai-NYU Medical Center, on why it's important to educate the public about the need for early screening for colon cancer, page 35.

"With a combination of computers and counselors, we can reach out and recruit 80 percent of smokers in the nation and get 20 percent to quit in two years. All of that for less than 4 percent of the tobacco settlement."

--James Prochasksa, University of Rhode Island, on his tailored cancer prevention programs, page 39.

"It's as simple as doing a literature search. You see who's actively involved in research, publishing and clinical service. Then you look at the programs they're affiliated with."

--M. Douglas Ris, Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, on how to find postdoctoral training in psycho-oncology, page 42.

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