CASTELLÓ. The Jaume I University of Castelló and the José Soriano Ramos Foundation have signed a collaboration agreement for the implementation of the Chair of Physical Activity and Oncology of the UJI, a pioneering chair in Spain that will allow the development of training, research and dissemination projects to improve the quality of life of cancer patients through physical exercise.
The rector of the UJI, Eva Alcon, and the vice president of the Foundation, Sonia Soriano, have signed the agreement accompanied by the vice-rector for Planning, Coordination and Communication, Modest Fabra; the member of the Foundation, Juan Casterá and teaching and research staff that will promote the activities and projects of the Chair: Eladio Collado, who will be the director; Carlos Hernando, Elena García; Ana Folch and Maria Dolores Temprado.
Effective for the well-being of cancer patients
Physical exercise is considered the most effective non-pharmacological intervention in promoting the physical, mental and functional well-being of cancer patients and a therapy that improves the quality of life of cancer patients. Recent evidence suggests that exercise helps to complement chemotherapy and to increase the efficacy of the same pathway increasing physiological angiogenesis in many types of cancer.
The Chair aims to promote and expand the work developed in this field by the project “Physical Activity and Oncology” developed for several years by the research group “Care and Health” of the Faculty of Health Sciences of the UJI, with the collaboration of the hospitals of the province of Castellón.
This new chair will incorporate the positive impact that this current project has had on some 60 breast cancer patients, and will expand its actions to patients of other types of cancer to help a hundred oncology patients in the beginning of the activities of the Chair. .
Provide coverage to cancer patients in the province
The Chair, which will be located in the Faculty of Health Sciences, has three basic objectives. A care objective, to create a physical exercise and cancer unit that could cover all cancer patients in the province of Castellón who wish, linking their access from the Hospitals of La Plana, the Provincial Hospital and the General University Hospital of Castellón. A research objective to create a specialized research unit of reference oriented to explore the benefits of this type of activity, opening the possibility of incorporating doctoral students and health science professionals in general, who want to develop their research activity within the development objectives of the Chair, and to advance the knowledge of the benefits of physical exercise in different types of cancers and with different training programs. And finally, a training objective, for the creation of a postgraduate university specialization in Physical Activity and Cancer, aimed at professionals in the health area; and the organization of a biennial research conference, in which all the fruit of advances in this area are collected.
The main objective of the research to be carried out by the Chair is to demonstrate the efficacy of establishing regulated and directed physical exercise programs for cancer patients as a non-pharmacological strategy of first choice due to its complementary benefits in the maintenance of mass, strength and fitness. muscle quality, bone mineral density, cardiovascular risk biomarkers, all free of adverse effects. A project with a great foreseeable socio-health impact after its establishment where the foreseeable benefits would be related to the physical, psychological and social spheres, and which would benefit numerous cancer patients in the province of Castellón.
“Great social impact”
The rector congratulated the teaching staff and research staff for the Chair project that is about to start and thanked the Foundation “for its involvement in starting this chair, which will have a great social impact, and we must value what is important that for the Universitat Jaume I the transfer of knowledge and research carried out on campus to improve the quality of life of our society ”.
For her part, Sonia Soriano congratulated the UJI and the members of the new Chair for the previous work already carried out during these last two years and that allow the project not to start from scratch, and has transmitted her «congratulations on the results obtained , for the courage of the work that remains to be done, and for the exciting challenges that the Chair assumes for the future.
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