NFtK / Fit4Surgery Foundation – Prehabilitation in Cancer

Funding is available to support research into pre-surgery lifestyle interventions that improve the outcome of cancer treatment.

Nationaal Fonds Tegen Kanker (NFtK – The Dutch National Fund Against Cancer) is a Dutch charitable organisation that was established in 1999. Its mission is to contribute to a longer and better life for people with cancer by supporting patient related projects with a focus on nutrition (including preventing malnutrition), exercise (including quality of life) and well-being (including psycho-social supervision).

The National Fund Against Cancer and Fit4Surgery have made funding available for research on lifestyle interventions during cancer treatment. With the aim of ensuring that lifestyle becomes an integrated component of disease treatment.

Improving lifestyle during cancer treatment has a positive effect on the outcomes of that treatment. Improving lifestyle after treatment also has a positive effect on cancer-free survival. Multimodal interventions are increasingly being researched and successfully implemented. Nevertheless, many questions remain unanswered. Which lifestyle interventions are most effective? How do we ensure that lifestyle programmes are tailored to the individual, remain affordable, and are implemented in the right place? 

The proposed research must focus on:

• Lifestyle assessment prior to surgery.
• Patient-centred or implementation research.
• Interventions aimed at improving care.
• Interventions aimed at improving quality of life.