O3278: Developing SchoolKit: A Technology-Enabled Toolkit to Support School Re-entry After Childhood Cancer

Background: A childhood cancer diagnosis disrupts all aspects of a child's life, including school participation, and impacts academic, social, and developmental trajectories. Re-entering the traditional school environment during or after cancer treatment poses challenges such as securing accommodations for treatment-related cognitive effects, social isolation, and bullying. No comprehensive, technology-enabled guide currently exists to assist children and parents in navigating the transition back to school after a childhood cancer diagnosis. To address this gap, we are developing SchoolKit, a cross-platform toolkit featuring multimedia content aimed at supporting the varied stakeholders involved in the hospital-to-school transition. To that end, the primary objective of this study is to develop and refine comprehensive resources that support successful school re-entry for students, tailored to the needs of children, parents, clinicians, and educators. Specifically, the project aims to (1) identify age-specific and role-specific resources to facilitate the transition from hospital to school, (2) engage stakeholder-specific advisory boards (SABs) to ensure the resources meet the diverse needs of all involved parties, and (3) partner with the SABs to iteratively design an effective organizational structure for the SchoolKit interface while identifying the most relevant resources for the tool.

Methods: Return-to-school resources were identified using the Google and Google Scholar search engines, utilizing permutations of the key words “educational”, “school”, “resource”, “support”, “learning”, “chronic diseases”, ”cancer”, “children”, “pediatrics”, and “transitioning”, before being ranked and filtered based on quality, accessibility, and relevance. Three different SABs, collectively composed of adolescent cancer survivors, caregivers, hospital school staff, psychologists, nurses, oncologists, and education specialists, convened to critique the content and design of the SchoolKit resource. Thematic analyses were performed after each session with SABs to further characterize discussion points.

Results: With comprehensive resource aggregation and filtering methodologies, we distilled more than 200 disparate resources into a structured, targeted framework of modules tailored to specific stakeholder needs within the hospital-to-school transition process. Thematic analyses yielded six core principles that represent key priorities across different stakeholder groups. We continue to work with our SABs to refine content for the resource and have begun recruiting for targeted content creation. This ongoing SAB engagement ensures that all materials address the unique needs and challenges of each target population. Content will be produced concurrently in English and Spanish to reflect community demographics. This resource framework represents a significant advancement in supporting seamless hospital-to-school transitions for vulnerable pediatric populations.

Conclusion: By employing a systematic approach to high-quality resource aggregation and leveraging multiple SABs, the SchoolKit resource will facilitate smoother hospital-to-school transitions for children with cancer and their families. This method of early development for SchoolKit provides a scalable, replicable, and accessible model for translating validated resources and community input into a robust foundation for building this practical tool for families.