PROGRAM

Wednesday 5 March 2025

  • Date: Wednesday 5 March 2025.
    Time: 10:30 am (arrival) for 11:00 am start – 4:30 pm
    Venue:  Meeting Place 3+4, Rydges Hotel, Exhibition St, Melbourne  

    This engaging and interactive pre-conference workshop, co-hosted by Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA) and the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia (COSA), is your chance to deepen your understanding of consumer engagement and turn shared insights into action.

    You’ll leave this workshop with the skills and confidence to embrace engagement as a partnership, shape better cancer care and lead change in survivorship.

    Why Attend?

    • Understand the fundamentals – Gain clarity on what consumer engagement is (and isn’t), shared language and terminology, and its role in health policy, research and strategy.

    • Learn how to engage effectively – Explore practical steps for meaningful engagement, from recruitment and ethical considerations to effective co-design practices.

    • Measure and sustain impact – Learn how to evaluate success, create feedback loops and embed consumer engagement into your research, policy or advocacy activities.

    • Connect and collaborate – Network with like-minded consumers, researchers and healthcare professionals who are shaping the future of cancer care.

    What to Expect?

    The workshop is structured around three key sessions for a comprehensive, hands-on learning experience:

    Session 1: The principles and language of consumer engagement

    Learn the 'what' of consumer engagement — its purpose, principles, and key concepts — while challenging assumptions and clarifying roles (e.g., consumer vs patient, co-design vs co-production).

    Session 2: Putting knowledge into action

    Master the 'how' of effective consumer engagement. Explore best practices for recruitment, support and ethical considerations. Discover when and how to engage consumers and the different roles they can play in research and service design.

    Session 3: Measuring impact and sustaining change

    Discover what meaningful and successful engagement looks like, reinforcing the ‘why’ behind the move from patient to partner. Learn how to measure success, create continuous feedback loops, embed partnerships into practice and how authentic engagement can drive sector leadership.

    Who Should Attend?

    This workshop is open to:

    • Cancer consumer representatives – ensure the voice of lived experience is heard and understood.

    • Representatives from cancer organisations – build successful consumer partnerships into your work.

    • Cancer researchers (particularly those who are early to mid-career) – develop confidence and capability in partnerships and co-design with consumers.

    • Healthcare professionals and policy-makers – learn how to embed consumer engagement in service design and research.

    Be part of the movement from patient to partner

    Don’t miss this chance to learn, connect and co-design the future of cancer care.

    About BCNA

    Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA) is Australia’s leading breast cancer consumer organisation with a network of over 175,000 people. As consumer led organisation, BCNA ensures the voices of lived experience is represented in breast cancer policy, research and service development. BCNA works with governments, health service providers, researchers, and the broader community to ensure that decisions and practices adopt patient-centred care.

    This workshop is a collaboration between BCNA consumer representatives, staff and COSA program committee members.  

    Stay tuned for more program details coming soon!

Thursday 6 March 2025

  • Welcome to country

  • Capacity and capability can be considered fundamental to appropriate and acceptable survivorship care. But what exactly does it mean? Whose capacity and capability? Providers? Health systems? Survivors? What is the difference between capacity and capability? How do we recognise capacity? How do we measure capability?  And how do we build it? Join us for the thought-provoking panel discussion testing our capacity to think differently and challenging the boundaries of our capabilities.

    Chairs: Bogda Koczwara and Alan White

    Speakers: Sufi Aidah Salieh, Elizabeth Deveny, Mei Krishnasamy, Sabe Sabesan

  • Poster viewing and exhibition

  • While much discussion around health care delivery is focused upon hospitals and clinics, for people experiencing cancer the vast majority of their time is spent at home, and the vast majority of support is provided by family, friends and community. This session will explore ways by which survivorship capacity at home may be enhanced.

    Speakers: Vanessa Beesley, Jason Mills, Camille Short

  • Speakers: Louisa Collins, Fiona Crawford-Williams, Hayley T Dillon, Alexander Haussmann, Darren Haywood, Ben Smith

  • Poster viewing and exhibition

  • Chairs: Lisa Briggs and Michael Jefford

    Speakers: Lisa Beatty, Vicki Durston, Nicolas Hart, Sarah Heynemann, Andrea Smith

  • Poster viewing and exhibition

  • Speakers: Maddison Dix, Sarah Ellis, Tiffany Li, Danielle Wing Lam Ng, Eli Ristevski, Dorcas Miss Serwaa

  • Join us on the Terrace Rooftop on level 2

Friday 7 March 2025

  • This session features a dynamic panel of five emerging leaders in survivorship research, healthcare, and consumer advocacy. They will explore their visions of leadership and discuss how they are shaping the future of cancer survivorship. Topics include defining leadership in this field, overcoming barriers, and leveraging enablers to build capacity. Panellists will share practical strategies and recommendations to enhance leadership development in survivorship care, aiming to inspire transformative change.

    Chairs: Makala Castelli and Julia Morris

    Speakers: TBC

  • Speakers: Litang Chen, Chad Han, Catherine Johnson, Ria Joseph, Kate Webber

  • Poster viewing and exhibition

  • This session delves into strategies for tailoring cancer care to the individual needs of people affected by cancer. Speakers will explore cutting-edge scientific approaches to survivorship care management, focusing on personalised plans that address unique health profiles and risk factors. Topics include the integration of genomics and symptom science to inform personalised cancer care; modulation of the gut microbiome to target treatment toxicity and responses; modulation of treatment efficacy; tumour biology, and cancer-specific outcomes through exercise medicine; and pre-clinical research to understand the mechanisms underpinning symptoms that may form the basis of future therapeutic targets.

    Attendees will gain insights into innovative methods for monitoring and supporting cancer survivors; and equip healthcare professionals and people affected by cancer with actionable knowledge to improve survivorship outcomes through individualised care strategies.

    Speakers: Kim Alexander, Rob Newton, Adam Walker, Hannah Wardill

  • Poster viewing and exhibition

  • Learn from one of our experts about their highlights and key takeaways from the posters

  • Many survivors are at risk of long-term and late effects as a result of cancer and cancer treatments. Many survivors are unaware of the risk of significant effects occurring, months or years after completing treatment at the time when their involvement with cancer service may be reduced. While late effect clinics are available in the paediatric setting, they are not routinely available to adult survivors and delivering at scale can be challenging given the numbers of people at risk. This session will consider how best to manage the risk of late effects using endocrine dysfunction as an example and consider potential models of care delivery for adult and paediatric survivors.

    Chairs: Meg Rynderman and David Wlyd

    Speakers: Cherie Chiang, Peter Downie, Kirsty Wiltshire

  • Poster viewing and exhibition

  • The COSA Model of Survivorship Care advocates care that is: survivor centred, coordinated and integrated across multiple levels of care, and equitably accessible. Amplifying the patient voice using patient reported outcomes, empowering patients to understand the complex health system using patient navigators, and enabling patients to choose models of survivorship care that suit their needs have enabled steps towards this ideal. But how much progress have we made towards implementing these advances in the real world, especially for priority populations? Are we walking the walk or just talking the talk?

    Chairs: Kathy Bell and Ben Smith

    Speakers: Ray Chan, Jacinta Elston and Bogda Koczwara