Emerging International Directions for Psychosocial Care
Low-middle-income (LMI) countries are emerging as a priority target for the development of psycho-oncology care. This chapter describes some well-recognized barriers to progress along with ideas on how evidence-based practice can be imported from developed health care systems into the LMI context. Important to this process is the need to tailor care services to national, regional, and cultural needs in order to take account of communication issues that are idiosyncratic to different LMI health care contexts. The use of low-cost technologies to support implementation of psycho-oncology care services is discussed as well as the need for training resources to be made available to local/national psycho-oncology professionals as the most important future resource. In this way key leaders within LMI countries can be upskilled and provide snowball dissemination of skills to professionals in their own countries. Future priorities are described along with ideas for implementation.