A SWOT Analysis of Oncofertility: Overcoming Resource Limitation to Fill an Ongoing Urgent Unmet Need

Abstract

Resource wealth or absence defines access to many fields of science and medicine; the emerging field of oncofertility is one prime example of this resource and access dilemma. At the intersection of life and death, where life-limiting and life-producing events cross paths, the implicit contradictions of cancer and fertility have left men and women with limited choices, until recently. As the field of oncofertility expands, it was realized that many intellectual and practice based resource issues have equal or greater impact on access to care as insurance and reimbursement. Indeed, the contrasting emotions and expectations of practitioners and patients, together with a continued paucity of scientific knowledge about fertility in the cancer setting and the lack of clinical assessment of reproductive outcomes for adolescents and young adults, represent some of the boundary conditions to increase access to oncofertility. When these barriers are scaled up to the global setting, the need for advocacy and leadership from multiple organizations and individuals becomes urgent. To better understand this uniquely defined resource landscape, we conducted an analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) faced by global oncofertility a SWOT analysis to better understand the current state of the field and to create multimodal interventions that may provide a roadmap for the future of this discipline.

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