Although nutrition is highly valued, families with and without food insecurity encounter substantial barriers to healthy eating in early survivorship, a pivotal window for nutrition intervention, and they expressed a strong need for multifaceted and modular nutrition interventions that address access barriers and promote empowerment.
Parents of early childhood cancer survivors place high value on healthy eating in survivorship.
Achieving nutritional goals is limited by cost, time, and dietary considerations.
Early survivorship is a period of ongoing, unmet nutrition and resource needs.
Parents want nutrition interventions that are modular, empowering, and address access barriers.
Nutrition barriers were not limited to food-insecure families; families with and without food insecurity faced substantial barriers to healthy eating.
The findings may inform design of future interventions to improve cardiometabolic health and reduce cardiovascular outcome disparities among childhood cancer survivors.
This study interviewed 20 parents of children who had recently finished cancer treatment (within the past year) about how they think about food and nutrition. Some families struggled to afford enough food, and some children had risk factors for heart disease, which is a leading cause of non-cancer death among childhood cancer survivors. The researchers wanted to understand what parents consider healthy eating, what makes it hard or easy, and what kind of help they would want. Parents strongly valued healthy eating for their children after cancer, but cost, lack of time, and dietary considerations made it hard to achieve their goals. This was true for families both with and without food insecurity. Parents also described the period right after treatment as one in which nutrition and resource needs were not being met. Parents wanted support programs that are flexible and mix-and-match (modular), that make them feel capable and in control, and that deal with practical barriers to getting food. This research suggests that future nutrition programs for childhood cancer survivors may work better if they address access and cost issues alongside education. As a small, single-center qualitative study, it describes parents' views rather than testing whether any program works.
Fry C, Nava-Coulter B, Roberts J, Revette A, Paul M, Lokko L, et al.. (2026). "Food is like all we do all day": a qualitative exploration of nutritional challenges and intervention needs among families of early childhood cancer survivors.. Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-026-11350-1