Award Criteria
PURPOSE
In alignment with the American Psychosocial Oncology Society’s (APOS’s) current goals of 1) expanding membership and 2) expanding diversity of discipline within our organization, we propose to initiate Early-Career Travel Awards to create a pipeline of diverse trainees who may maintain APOS membership later in their careers.
A major barrier to APOS attendance for early career psycho-oncologists is the expense of conference travel at a time when students may have low or no income. We have found that student members of APOS with years of commitment to the organization through committee involvement have been unable to attend the conference due to lack of funding. Informal travel assistance that is not advertised on the APOS website may favor trainees who are already likely to be in the APOS pipeline and may disadvantage diverse trainees who do not know to inquire about such opportunities. To address this barrier, several of our peer organizations have a longstanding policy of offering multiple travel awards to assist with the expenses associated with conference attendance (Society of Behavioral Medicine; American Psychosomatic Society/Society for Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine).
ELIGIBILITY
Awards specifically earmarked for each of the following groups: graduate students( including masters, phd, doctoral), postdoctoral fellows (residency/training) , or early career faculty (first 5 years)
AWARD BENEFITS
Travel Awardees will be recognized in the opening ceremony at the conference along with other awardees, and will be invited to the Mentoring Mix and Mingle, where they will have the chance to network with APOS Mentorship Program Mentors and Mentees, and with Health Equity Scholars. Awardees will also be included in the APOS Mentorship Program and how to enroll to serve as Mentor or Mentee following the conference. Leading up to the conference, they will be informed about and encouraged to attend SIG meetings that align with their interests, where they will learn about opportunities to join the SIGs. They will also be informed about APOS Committees and how to join them.
- 5 first-time or early-career attendees based on scores on their submitted abstracts for $500 each (Annual Total = $2,500).
- Membership for 2025 ($90)
- Conference registration for 2025 ($275)
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