On this historic year, as ASCO proudly commemorates its 50th anniversary and decades of evolutionary change and growth, it also celebrates the significant progress that has been made against cancer throughout history. ASCO’s anniversary website, CancerProgress.Net, chronicles these achievements and more.
In honor of the Society’s anniversary, the site features stories about ASCO’s evolution, a timeline of advances in cancer, aggregated news and views on ASCO’s anniversary and progress, and social media features.
The interactive Cancer Progress Timeline, a key feature of the site developed under the guidance of an editorial board of 21 of the nation’s leading oncologists, explores advances in nearly 20 types of cancers. The story of progress is shared by the timeline editors in their video interviews.
Decades of Improvements in Quality of Life
In her video interview, Quality of Life Specialty Editor Lidia Schapira, MD, FASCO, said, “We’ve come a long way in making our cancer treatments better, more precise, and also easier to bear. Years ago, getting cancer treatment—which usually just meant chemotherapy—was a pretty awful experience for many patients. We had very few drugs to help them deal with side effects, and we had a culture that was far less open than it is now.
“I think that just as important as our advances in understanding the differences between cancers is our understanding that human beings are different. It’s the integration of all of the human aspects into the personalized medical approaches that is really helping us move toward a far better era of delivering care, where patients and their families will feel supported throughout their cancer journey and hopefully also will have far better outcomes.”
Tour ASCO’s anniversary website, CancerProgress.Net, to navigate the timeline advances and to hear from other editors about milestones in cancer research. Also, follow ASCO on ASCO Connection, Twitter, and Facebook to join in on the conversation about progress. ■
© 2014. American Society of Clinical Oncology. All rights reserved.
