The Translational Research Working Group Developmental Pathway for Lifestyle Alterations

The Translational Research Working Group (TRWG) was created as a national initiative to evaluate the current status of National Cancer Institute's investment in translational research and envision its future. The TRWG conceptualized translational research as a set of six developmental processes or pathways focused on various clinical goals. One of those pathways describes the development of lifestyle alterations, which can, variously, be recommended to prevent cancer, modify a patient's adherence and response to cancer treatment, ameliorate side effects of cancer treatments, or improve prognosis and quality of life in cancer patients and survivors. The lifestyle alteration pathway was conceived not as a comprehensive description of the corresponding real-world processes, but rather as a tool designed to facilitate movement of a candidate lifestyle alteration through the translational process up to the point where it could be handed off for definitive testing, when appropriate. This article discusses key issues associated with the development of lifestyle alterations in light of the pathway.