In this interview, we meet Gisela Michel from the University of Lucerne.

 

Please introduce yourself and share with us why you joined PanCareFollowUp.

I am an associate professor in health and social behavior at the University of Lucerne in Switzerland. My background is in psychology and I have worked in the field of childhood cancer since 2004. Since 2009, I have been a member of PanCare and for several years I have been active on the PanCare board. For more than 10 years now, I have been interested in improving follow-up care for childhood cancer survivors.

I am very happy to now be part of the international project, in which we try to implement person-centered follow-up care to survivors of childhood cancer. I think this is currently the best follow-up care program that we can aim for.

Explain your organisation and your role in PanCareFollowUp.

The University of Lucerne collaborates predominantly in Work Package 3 of the PanCareFollowUp project. We have been responsible for the preparation of the patient reported outcomes (PROs). These PROs are used to study if the person-centered follow-up care is really helping survivors to make a change. One of the most important outcomes is Empowerment. We hope that survivors feel more empowered after having attended their follow-up care appointment.

The University of Lucerne is also responsible for the health economic aspect of the project. With Prof. Stefan Boes we have a health economist on board such that we can find out if the person-centered follow-up care is also satisfactory from an economic perspective.

In addition the University of Lucerne will be involved in the analyses of the data, and with Dr. Katharina Roser we also have a mathematician and epidemiologist in the team.

Why do you think PanCareFollowUp is an important project and what makes it unique for you?

The PanCareFollowUp project will implement excellent follow-up care for long-term survivors of childhood cancer. Many survivors had previously been lost to follow-up care, and many might have wondered only later in life, if there are any late effect of the cancer they had been treated for in childhood.

With the PanCareFollowUp intervention, these survivors have the opportunity to receive optimal follow-up care which is based on the latest international recommendations. This will help survivors to receive the care they need, but also to get empowered and take more responsibility for their own health.

The close international collaboration with all the extremely engaged people from PanCare is excellent and makes this project unique.

What do you hope this project will achieve?

I hope that this project will be a starting point for the implementation of person-centered follow-up care in many other institutions and countries. Regular long-term follow-up care should be available to all survivors of childhood cancer.

What’s the biggest challenge in PanCareFollowUp?

Currently the COVID-19 pandemic might be a big challenge.

What’s the most fun thing for you in PanCareFollowUp?

I really like all the people I am working with in this project. It is great to meet them regularly for the semi-annual meetings, even if they now only take place on Zoom. But even there, we manage to have a pub-quiz in the break; or yoga sessions after a long day of in-person meeting.

What’s the most important benefit of your participation in PanCareFollowUp?

I have been working for many years in the field of follow-up care for childhood cancer survivors. I have studied preferences of survivors, parent or health care professionals, and I have been involved in the development of guidelines and recommendations for follow-up care.

But PanCareFollowUp, for me, is now the first time that the results of our and many other people’s research is being implemented.