More support for your cancer journey
Most people know the importance of exercise in balancing your mind, body and spirit. For cancer survivors, physical activity can be even more significant to successfully navigate life after treatment.
“We are deeply committed to helping people put life back together after treatment,” Cassandra Jackson, Wellness Program Coordinator at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center says. “It’s really complicated.”
Roswell Park is now offering two (fun and cool) 12-week exercise programs to help you face forward with confidence and thrive. Each is a hybrid of survivorship support service and clinical study to help us learn how best to enhance our support for you through a challenging journey.
Like the rest of our survivorship services, the new exercise programs help personalize your medical and preventive care, help you manage side effects and restore your body and soul. They are funded by the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation and were developed in collaboration with D’Youville University and the YMCA. Both are offered at no out-of-pocket cost and open to Roswell Park cancer survivors and caregivers who are 18 or older and speak and read English. Eligibility and enrollment for both programs begins with completing a questionnaire that includes your age, gender and information about the kind of cancer and treatment you had.
“We are trained in oncology; I know what treatment does. A lot of people come to me and have lost weight and may not have the self-confidence to begin or restart exercising,” Roswell Park physical therapist Andrew Ray, PhD, PT, says.
“We want to look at the feasibility of these programs in terms of improving quality of life, shortness of breath and fatigue.”
A virtual option to exercise at home
The Virtual YMCA exercise intervention is home-based and involves:
- Completion of at least three exercise videos a week, typically 20 to 60 minutes long each.
- Meeting the national physical activity exercise guideline of 150 minutes of moderate aerobic-based activity and two to three strength training sessions each week for 12 weeks.
- Keeping a weekly physical activity journal.
The Virtual YMCA exercise program also offers you the option of a before and after physical therapy assessment with Dr. Ray, who curated the exercise videos used for the Roswell Park survivorship study from those produced by the YMCA in 2020 during the COVID quarantine.
In-person exercise program
The D’Youville RESTORE program is an in-person survivor exercise and nutrition initiative offered twice a week for 12 weeks at the Community Health Hub & Thrive Rehabilitation and Wellness Center on the D’Youville University campus in Buffalo.
The D’Youville RESTORE intervention involves:
- In-person sessions with a physical therapist and registered dietitian lasting about a total of two hours.
- Education on alternative forms of exercise and health topics that are important to cancer survivors, including balance, stretching, tai chi, yoga, breathing exercises, meditation, sleep, and acupuncture.
“We wanted to expand our reach, so people didn’t really need to come to (Roswell Park) campus,” explains Dr. Ray, adding that the study is also collecting zip codes of the participants to determine the need and benefit to rural communities.
We are here for your entire cancer journey
It's our goal to make life after cancer the best it can be. Our Survivorship services are offered at two convenient locations in downtown Buffalo and Amherst.
Start and end on your time
Neither new survivorship exercise program has a static start time, but you must complete the consecutive 12 weeks for the clinical study to be valid. Roswell Park also is hoping to get as many survivors as possible to enroll in the fun and cool — and free — new exercise offerings.
“We are doing this research to improve the services we provide to patients, caregivers, and their families. It will help us to understand better how to bring the best services to the most people,” says Christina Crabtree-Ide, PhD, MPH, Roswell Park Director of Cancer Screening and Survivorship Outreach.
“Survivorship is hard. We are developing these programs to make it easier. Our hope is that people will walk away feeling restored, and that it will help them live a better life after cancer.”
How to start
Interested participants should contact Andrew Ray, PhD, PT at 716-845-1300 ext. 4227 for Virtual YMCA or 716-845-1300 ext. 5001 for D’Youville RESTORE or Andrew.Ray@RoswellPark.org.
