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adolescence or early adulthood, this typically includes an annual clinic visit with the
multidisciplinary team.
LEAP long term follow-up care has been modelled on overseas programmes,
incorporating evidence based guidelines and recommendations into the programme.
While this is “Best Practice” and provides us with the advantage of learning from the
experiences and knowledge of much larger institutions, when we look at the
psychosocial and quality of life issues these are less well translated across to New
Zealand. Within New Zealand society the effects of culture, community, education,
healthcare practice protocols are very different from those of European and America
cultures.
For young people living in New Zealand who have survived a childhood cancer,
our knowledge of the consequences of living with late effects as they try to deal with the
normal tasks of adolescence and adulthood is limited. This limited knowledge is based
on assumptions made from data drawn from other cultures. It is timely to gather our
own information on the issues faced by young people who have survived cancer so we
better understand them and develop supportive care interventions to improve outcomes.
1.3 Youth2000 and Youth’07 – National Health and Wellbeing Surveys of
New Zealand Secondary School Students.
In 2001 the first national health and wellbeing survey of New Zealand youth was
undertaken, this was a seminal study that provided the most comprehensive, accurate
and up to date information on the health and wellbeing of young people growing up in
New Zealand (Adolescent Health Research Group, 2003a). The aim of the Youth2000
survey was to determine the prevalence of selected health behaviours and protective
factors in a representative population of New Zealand youth comprising approximately
10,000 secondary school students from 133 randomly selected colleges throughout New
Zealand. The cross sectional self report survey incorporated 523 questions using an
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