Philosophy

The change in academic medicine, and across all venues of clinical practice, will result from rigorous scientific demonstration of the effectiveness of new therapeutic strategies and approaches.  To this end, DCCRP designs, conducts, facilitates, and supports clinical studies that will generate the evidence necessary to advance supportive oncology, integrative oncology, and palliative care as standard medical practice. This evidence then serves as the foundation for DCCRP’s development of new models of care, which seek to improve patients’ experiences of their health and of cancer care.

The DCCRP philosophy is to:

• focus on enhancing the well-being of patients through design and delivery of direct patient-centered interventions;
• recognize the critical role of family, caregivers, and loved ones not only in providing care to the patient, but also in supporting and enabling evidence-driven improvements in care;
• adhere to the principles and methods of rigorous scientific research and of highest-quality, evidence-based medicine;
• engage collaborators across disciplinary, institutional, and national lines to leverage existing expertise and to incorporate a broad spectrum of perspectives on cancer and cancer patients’ experiences;
• carry the research trajectory from conduct of study through dissemination of results to translation and implementation in clinical practice; and
• support quality improvement and performance monitoring efforts.

DCCRP studies improve the management of symptoms commonly experienced by cancer patients, develop innovative models of care based upon proven interventions, build research capacity in the rapidly evolving areas of supportive oncology and palliative medicine, and strengthen quality of care in oncology.


This focus on improving whole person care for the patient and family is consistent with a core principle of Palliative Medicine and Supportive Oncology – best biopsychosocial care across the continuum of illness. Importantly, the practice and principles of Palliative Medicine are not confined to dying or the end of life, and neither are DCCRP activities.