Beginning in August, the Blood Cancer and Bone Marrow Transplant (BC/BMT) SIG will have a monthly online forum to discuss various psychosocial issues in our practice. Each month, we will explore a different topic such as survivorship, medical marijuana, working with young adults and mental health concerns. Even though our SIG is blood cancer and bone marrow transplant, I think many topics will be applicable for all oncology social workers.

We will use Basecamp as our platform for the forum. Basecamp is an app that helps people in different locations work toward a common goal—e.g., finishing a project together. Basecamp’s primary features are to-do lists, milestone management, forum-like messaging, file sharing and time tracking. Here is the link to “opt in”. If you would like additional information about the forum, please contact paula.brumback@adventhealth.com.

Special thanks to Nancy Boyle, Erica Bryan Wegner, Katie Schoepner and Dana Corneau-Dia for sharing their abstract “Strengthening the Future of Psychosocial Care in Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant” at the AOSW conference. Their PowerPoint and abstract are available on the AOSW Website Special Interest Group BC/BMT.

Additionally, special thanks to Jill Randall, PhD student at University of Louisville, for sharing her dissertation work on pre-hematopoietic cell transplant (HCT) psychosocial assessment. Her ultimate goal is to develop an HCT psychosocial assessment tool that would inform an evidenced-based practice standard and promote psychosocial research. For more information, contact Jill directly at jill.randall@louisville.edu.

The National Marrow Donor Program (also known as NMDP/Be the Match) has a System Capacity Initiative Social Work Working Group that has been convening for many years to build capacity in the field of BMT social work. This group has collaborated with the American Society Transplantation and Cellular Therapy (ASTCT) to advocate for BMT social work to be represented within their organization. Earlier this year, the ASTCT approved the proposal and a Social Work Special Interest Group (SIG) was formed.

The ASTCT SIG will further integrate social work into the HCT team and provide an avenue for collaboration and advancement of psychosocial health research. The vision is that the SIG will help bring greater awareness of BMT social work to other disciplines within the BMT field. It is meant to complement our social work professional organizations (AOSW and APOSW). We are also working with ASTCT to reduce the membership fee for members of AOSW and APOSW; updates will be shared as we get them. For additional information, visit the ASTCT SIG website.