42 U.S.C. § 285a–11a — Cancer survivorship programs

(a) Research to evaluate model systems of care for pediatric cancer survivors. The Secretary may give awards to eligible entities to research, develop, and test ways to monitor and care for childhood and adolescent cancer survivors for their whole lives, including moving them from pediatric to adult care and coordinating that care. When making these awards, the Secretary must try to include, within the normal peer-review process, entities of different sizes — small, medium, and large — and sites in different kinds of places, including rural and urban areas. An "eligible entity" means a medical school, a children's hospital, a cancer center, a community-based medical facility, or any other entity with real experience doing this kind of work. Award money can be used to develop, study, or test one or more models of survivor care, with special focus on: designing follow-up care and monitoring programs, including peer support and mentoring; creating models for care that involves multiple types of specialists; sharing information with health care providers about culturally and linguistically appropriate follow-up care; building psychosocial and support programs — including peer support and mentoring — to improve survivors' and families' quality of life; designing tools for securely transferring treatment records and care summaries between providers, or between long-term survivorship study groups, including risk factors and recommended follow-up plans; sharing this information and these programs with other providers (including primary care doctors and internists) and with survivors and their families, as appropriate and lawful; and building initiatives that help different kinds of care providers — cancer specialists, primary care doctors, mental health professionals, and others — coordinate and hand off care smoothly, including team-based approaches. (b) Workforce development for health care providers on medical and psychosocial care for childhood cancer survivors. Within 1 year of January 5, 2023, the Secretary must review how the Department of Health and Human Services trains health care providers who treat pediatric cancer patients and survivors. This review must identify existing models for providing medical and psychosocial care to survivors and training programs for the providers who deliver that care, and must recommend ways to strengthen the Department's workforce-development work in this area. Within 2 years of January 5, 2023, the Secretary must send Congress — specifically the Senate HELP Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee — a report on what the review found and recommended.