In October 2024, Kerri Winters-Stone, Ph.D., convened a three-day expert panel meeting at the Knight Cancer Research Building in Portland to develop the first set of consensus-based exercise guidelines specific to older cancer survivors.

The panel included researchers, clinicians, patients and survivors with wide-ranging areas of expertise, from geriatrics, geriatric oncology, rehabilitation, physical therapy, and exercise physiology, along with a patient advocate and fitness professional. Co-investigators on the study include OHSU’s Gabrielle Meyers, M.D., and Elizabeth Eckstrom, M.D., M.P.H.

The initiative is called “Advancing Capacity to Integrate Exercise into the Care of Older Cancer Survivors”, shortened to “ACES.” The ACES work stems from an NCI-funded grant Winters-Stone received to develop infrastructure that can advance research and practice in cancer and aging, and she says this is one of the key projects to emerge from that effort.

“ACES is the first step toward developing evidence-based exercise recommendations for older cancer survivors who are the largest -- but often times very underserved -- segment of people living with and beyond cancer,” she says. “Our ultimate goal is to ensure that exercise becomes part of standard cancer care for every person diagnosed with cancer and that the specific needs of older cancer survivors are integrated into practice.”

Winters-Stone says older survivors have unique needs and capacity for exercise, and specific guidance is not provided in current American College of Sports Medicine, American Society of Clinical Oncology and National Comprehensive Cancer Network exercise guidelines for people with cancer.

The ACES team is developing consensus-based guidelines using input from a community advisory board for stakeholder input, reviewing published trials and trials in progress, and conducting a Delphi study of exercise professionals to outline an initial set of exercise recommendations. Winters-Stone says the interdisciplinary working group of experts from across the country considered these sources of information and an Evidence-to-Decision framework to guide them to consensus-driven exercise guidelines for older cancer survivors.

The group is aiming to publish their first set of guidelines in Spring 2025.

A new internship program at one of the University of Oregon’s fastest-growing majors is setting students up for the health field better than ever before. Read more about a recent graduate’s experience with interning at Dr. Winters-Stone's Exercise Lab. 

The Exercising Together study at OHSU is the first in the world that uses exercise to improve the health of both cancer patients and their partners. Hear from Dr. Kerri Winters-Stone and some of the participants. 

The study compared two different exercise programs — tai ji quan versus strength training — to see which was more effective in preventing falls after chemotherapy in older, postmenopausal women. Neither stood out as superior to another, but the findings suggest that tai ji might specifically help reduce fall-related injuries in patients with treatment-induced balance impairments. Read more in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Sponsored by the Danish and Dutch physical therapy associations, Kerri Winters-Stone, Ph.D., and Kimi Daniel, M.S., delivered master classes on exercise-based approaches to improve functioning in cancer survivors to over 60 therapists in Copenhagen and Amsterdam. They were invited to write a paper on the program that will be published in a journal of the Danish Physical Therapy Association.  

An international panel including OHSU’s Kerri Winters-Stone, Ph.D., has published best practice recommendations on exercise for people with cancer that has spread to their bones.

Read Kerri Winters-Stone's commentary featured in the Journal of Supportive Care: "Delivering exercise medicine to cancer survivors: has COVID-19 shifted the landscape for how and who can be reached with supervised group exercise?"

Exercise is not only safe during and after cancer treatment, studies have found that physical training can bring improvements in daily functioning and quality of life while reducing symptoms such as cancer-related fatigue. And there is even some early evidence linking exercise to living longer with cancer.

Losing bone and muscle mass while gaining fat is a troubling problem for men receiving androgen deprivation therapy for prostate cancer, putting them at risk for heart disease, frailty and broken bones. But a first-of-its-kind randomized clinical trial is providing evidence that targeted exercise can slow bone loss, reverse muscle weakness, and prevent gains in body fat in men with prostate cancer undergoing androgen deprivation therapy, or ADT.