Member May 2026: Growing the Evidence Together: Successes, Pitfalls, and Practical Lessons (On-Demand)-Session Recording

Video Transcription

Video Summary

This Member May session focused on building and strengthening cancer rehabilitation research within the AAPM&R community. After housekeeping announcements, Dr. Molinares and Dr. Fricke introduced the Cancer Rehab Group’s goals: to share research initiatives, discuss common barriers, and foster collaboration across institutions.<br /><br />Dr. Adrian Christian presented results from a cancer rehabilitation research survey. Key findings showed strong interest in multi-institutional collaboration, but major barriers included lack of time, funding, administrative support, and research training. Common research areas included prehabilitation, lymphedema, neuropathy, exercise, and patient-reported outcomes. Suggested next steps included creating a practical research training course, building mentorship networks, and forming collaborative research teams.<br /><br />Several presenters shared examples of ongoing or completed projects and the lessons learned. Matthew Chen and Dr. Vargo discussed a multicenter retrospective study of medication prescribing patterns in outpatient cancer rehab, emphasizing data standardization, pseudonymization, and the value of multicenter datasets. Trainees also presented retrospective studies on lung cancer prehabilitation, brain tumors in inpatient rehab, and vertebral augmentation with tumor ablation, highlighting challenges such as IRB approvals, missing data, coding issues, and small sample sizes.<br /><br />Dr. Anne Ngo Hoang described the long, iterative process of securing funding for pancreatic cancer prehabilitation research, stressing early planning, strong administrative support, creative funding strategies, and impactful scientific writing. Dr. Jessica Chang explained how a systematic review of head and neck cancer–associated lymphedema required careful topic narrowing, research librarian support, and use of Covidence. Finally, Dr. Evelyn Quinn shared a quality improvement project improving mobility in hospitalized transplant patients through an incentive-based “Recovery in Motion” program.<br /><br />The session concluded with a call for volunteers to join the cancer rehab research subcommittee and continue building collaborative projects.

Keywords

cancer rehabilitation

AAPM&R

multi-institutional collaboration

research survey

prehabilitation

lymphedema

neuropathy

exercise

patient-reported outcomes

mentorship networks

quality improvement