Centres and institutes_

Psycho-oncology Cooperative Research Group

Improving the emotional support of people affected by cancer

We have close to 1900 members - researchers, doctors, psychologists and other health professionals with a common mission to care for the whole person, not just the disease.

Our aims

Established in 2005, our work focuses on caring for people from the time of diagnosis throughout the whole cancer journey. We aim to support people to enjoy life and create a balance between life activities and efforts to achieve psychological resilience in the face of a disease that can be both chronic and life-limiting.

The Psycho-oncology Cooperative Research Group (PoCoG) is a member of the Co-operative Clinical Trials Groups of the Clinical Oncological Society of Australia and receives core infrastructure funding from the Australian federal government through Cancer Australia.

The PoCoG executive office is located in the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney. Membership is open to researchers and health professionals from Australia and New Zealand, and associate membership is open to international psycho-oncology researchers and health professionals.

Our mission

We aim to improve outcomes for people affected by cancer by:

Developing and facilitating high quality, collaborative and clinically relevant research that focuses on interventions and services to optimise psychosocial and supportive care.
Providing expert advice, resources and support to researchers and health professionals to increase collaboration and innovation in psycho-oncology research.
Bringing together researchers, clinicians, health care professionals and consumers to share ideas and form new collaborations and networks.
Developing national research capacity and collaborations to conduct large-scale, multi-centre research of clinical relevance and importance, which would be difficult for a single team to undertake.
Encouraging and collaborating with cooperative cancer trials groups to include psychosocial or quality of life sub-studies in existing and planned research.

Research

We develop and facilitate high-quality, collaborative and clinically-relevant psycho-oncology research that focuses on innovative ways to improve the quality of life and psychological wellbeing of people affected by cancer. Our study areas aim to improve outcomes for cancer patients and address the needs of vulnerable populations.