Just ask us cancer

Just ASK?

Sounds so easy and is yet so difficult.. especially when it comes to intimate topics like body image, sexuality and fertility. Despite the fact that these are core topics of young cancer survivors they are rarely addressed and do leave young survivors with the feeling of being left alone, unheard and even weird! That was the reason why we wanted to close this gap and address the unmet needs, by breaking tabus about youth cancer!

The Aim

The aim of our project is to close the gap in follow-up care for adolescents and young adults on the subjects of body image, sexuality and fertility, address unmet needs in terms of sex education and support, and, in the long run, reduce the development of psychosexual issues and improve the overall quality of life of those affected by cancer. Every fate, every life story is different. That is why we would like to respond to survivors’ needs as individually as possible and support our cancer patients in finding their own way in life.

What is our project about?

The basic idea of the “justASKus” project is to create a holistic follow-up care concept focussing on body image, sexuality and fertility, which should offer both easy-to-access information and the possibility to share stories with others affected by cancer as well as physical experiences in practical exercises. Furthermore, we would like to improve the training of health care personnel on these subjects so as to extend the group of possible contacts for patients. In order to integrate as many points of view as possible in the design of our project and thus meet the needs of adolescents and young adults affected by cancer as well as possible, we put together an interdisciplinary team with representatives from various areas of care for those affected by cancer as well as one survivor, and, in December 2021, we founded the justASKus association. We also want to make our patients’ voices heard and include them in the development of our services because our services should not only be defined FOR but also WITH our cancer patients!

We want to achieve this as follows:

  • Access to suitable information (website)
  • Podcast series: the sofa without plusch and the ASK Force, where we talk about tabu topics with other survivors and experts in the fields to provide an idea how to improve your quality of life
  • Personal support (ASK Clinic, workshops)
  • Opportunities to share information and stories with others affected by cancer in a protected setting (website, workshops)
  • Improvement in handling the relevant issues and increasing the number of partners by training medical personnel (communication workshops)

So feel free to visit our website, our instagram profile and tiktok account and especially write to us your questions, needs, suggestions etc etc. Every voice counts and we are very much looking forward to hear from you!