Understanding topics and sentiment in an online cancer survivor community.

Online cancer communities help members support one another, provide new perspectives about living with cancer, normalize experiences, and reduce isolation. The American Cancer Society's 166000-member Cancer Survivors Network (CSN) is the largest online peer support community for cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers. Sentiment analysis and topic modeling were applied to CSN breast and colorectal cancer discussion posts from 2005 to 2010 to examine how sentiment change of thread initiators, a measure of social support, varies by discussion topic.

Cancer survivorship: a new challenge in comprehensive cancer control.

Cancer survivors are a growing population in the United States because of earlier cancer diagnosis, the aging of society, and more effective risk reduction and treatment. Concerns about the long-term physical, psychosocial, and economic effects of cancer treatment on cancer survivors and their families are increasingly being recognized and addressed by public, private, and non-profit organizations. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how survivorship fits within the framework of comprehensive cancer control.