About this project

The goal of the project is to use the community participation approach for facilitating the return to work of cancer survivors. The problem is intensely studied in the European countries, but not yet in Romania. Although the literature shows there are clear benefits if a cancer employee returns to work (for the patient, his (her) family, for the employer and ultimately for society), going back to work after a cancer diagnosis is not easy. Various barriers on the patient or employer side hinder the return to work. Moreover, stakeholders (patients, employers, physicians, recruiters) are powerless in relation to this problem.

The project will not only aim to collect data from stakeholders regarding the current situation on this problem in Romania, but also to empower them, by creating opportunities for accumulating information and knowledge. Several categories of stakeholders will be involved in the project: employees diagnosed with cancer that either returned to work or not, representatives of employers (i.e. top and line managers), physicians (oncologists, occupational) and human resources recruiters. We will use triangulation of data collection (review of policies, databases, fieldwork) and methods (documentary analysis, secondary analysis, interview). The design will be exploratory, descriptive and cross-sectional.

We propose three objectives:

(1) To describe the state of the art regarding the relation between cancer and work in Romania;

(2) To explore the perspectives of the employers, the employees diagnosed with cancer that returned to work, and the human resources recruiters about returning to work after cancer;

(3) To draw synthetic documents for raising awareness of stakeholders in organisations and policy makers on issues regarding returning to work of cancer survivors. The synthetic documents will be disseminated in paper and electronically and in a dissemination conference

Three research questions are guiding this study:

(1) what is the context regarding the cancer and work in Romania;

(2) what are the factors influencing the employer’s, recruiter’s and health professionals' support toward returning to work of cancer survivors;

(3) what are the patients’ views regarding the return to work after cancer diagnose and treatment.