A Research Study for Latina Women After Breast Cancer Treatment

Among Hispanics, the largest and fastest growing ethnic minority group in the U.S., cancer is the leading cause of death whereas cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for African Americans and non-Hispanic Whites (NHWs). Hispanics also experience substantially lower rates of 5-year cancer-specific survival relative to non-Hispanic Whites (NHWs). Hispanic cancer patients in the U.S. also report significantly worse cancer-related symptom burden and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) than NHWs, even after adjusting for socioeconomic factors. Despite this, very few randomized, intervention studies have specifically targeted cancer-related symptom burden and HRQOL outcomes among Hispanic women, especially during the period at the end of active treatment which is a critical period to intervene to provide skills and tools to assist with this transition. Innovative approaches to providing interventions such as Smartphone technology are especially important for this patient population. Ubiquitous Smartphone use among ethnic minorities in the US provide a unique opportunity to implement a pragmatic technology- and evidence-based psychosocial intervention that overcomes some access to care barriers as well as time and logistical constraints. Furthermore, given that Hispanics own Smartphones and seek health information online from a mobile device at similar or higher rates than other groups in the U.S., Smartphone interventions offer an opportunity to overcome obstacles to accessing resources and services that can be culturally informed and provide skills to improve symptom burden and HRQOL. This study aims to create and evaluate a culturally informed eHealth psychoeducational and psychosocial intervention for English or Spanish-speaking Hispanic women completing treatment for breast cancer. This intervention is grounded in evidence-based paradigms to improve the proposed Primary Outcomes: Cancer-Related Symptom Burden and HRQOL and the proposed Secondary Outcomes: usability and markers the intervention use. This study is designed in two-phases to develop and test a Smartphone-based intervention that can be disseminated to cancer survivors at a relatively low cost. The first phase is intended to create an eHealth intervention designed to improve cancer-related symptom burden and HRQOL. The second phase is designed as an 8-week randomized trial intended to evaluate the eHealth intervention when compared to a control condition. It is hypothesized that the eHealth intervention will significantly improve cancer-related symptom burden and HRQOL compared to the control condition.