The Intervention CAN-Work-S: Facilitating Work Participation among Cancer Survivors During their Entire Professional Career

Approximately four out of ten Swedes get cancer during their lives, and of these, four out of ten are diagnosed during their working life.

The improved survival rates dramatically increase the need to support cancer survivors to return to work and experience a health-promoting working life.

In Project 1, factors associated with return to work are studied in a longitudinal cohort study with a five-year follow-up period.

Register data on sickness absence, and work-related, individual, sociodemographic and clinical factors, collected in questionnaires and medical records, are studied.

Project 2 conducts interviews on cancer survivors’, health practitioners’, social insurance officers’, and first-line managers’ perspectives on factors experienced as facilitating or constitute barriers to work participation for cancer survivors, and perceptions of how support in remaining active in a health-promoting working life should be designed.

Project 3 analyses the long-term consequences of cancer for sick leave, unemployment, sickness compensation, early retirement, and care consumption by studying register data from 2005-2024 for people diagnosed with cancer 2010-2019 and matching population referents.

A randomised selection of the cohort provides study questionnaire data for analyses of factors associated with sickness absence.

Project 4 adapts an internationally developed occupational cancer rehabilitation intervention to the context of Sweden: CAN-Work-S.

Effects on sickness absence, self-efficacy to work, work ability, health at work and costs are compared to standard care cancer rehabilitation. In health-economic analyses, costs are related to effects and benefits. The research programme contributes new important knowledge about work participation in cancer survivors.

The research programme thus benefits society, health care, employers and cancer survivors, facilitating opportunities to remain active on the labour market throughout working life.