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Exploring the efficacy of a paraprofessional delivered telephonic psychoeducational intervention on emotional well-being in African American breast cancer survivors

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Abstract

Purpose

African American breast cancer survivors (AABCS) are underserved in medical and psychosocial care despite greater disease burden. We evaluated the effectiveness of a telephonic psycho-educational intervention trial on improving emotional well-being (EWB) in a sample of AABCS.

Methods

Secondary data analyses with 40 AABCS who reported elevated distress were randomly assigned to the intervention or control group. We used Wilcoxon signed rank tests to measure pre- to post-intervention score changes in individual EWB items (FACT-G). Independent t tests compared changes in mean scores between the intervention and control groups.

Results

Overall emotional well-being, as well as emotions pertaining to sadness, coping, and nervousness, showed some improvements as a result of the intervention. Changes in the subscale total score and all except one subscale item had clinically meaningful effect sizes (d ≥ 0.35). Statistically significant between-group differences in mean score changes were observed.

Conclusions

Our results and approach advance supportive care interventions by illuminating the benefits and limitations of a paraprofessional delivered, licensed professional supervised psycho-educational intervention. Additionally, as emotional well-being is multifaceted, the individual item analysis approach used in this study provides insight into specific areas of improvement and vulnerability within the emotional well-being domain of health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Our findings can facilitate the development of culturally responsive and patient-centered survivorship care, psychosocial-oncology interventions and care—tailored to the emotional well-being and unmet needs of medically vulnerable and underserved patients.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the survivors who participated in the study and Drs. Jung-Won Lim and Aria Miller who contributed to the data analyses.

Funding

This study was funded by the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research program (W81XWH-04-1-0548). The corresponding author has full control of all primary data and is willing to submit them upon request to the Journal of Supportive Care in Cancer for review.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center of Community Alliance for Research and Education (CCARE), Division of Health Equities, City of Hope Medical Center, 1500 East Duarte Road, Duarte, CA, 91010-3000, USA

    Kimlin Tam Ashing

  2. Breast Cancer Program, Oncology Department, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Marshalee George

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  1. Kimlin Tam Ashing
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  2. Marshalee George
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Correspondence to Kimlin Tam Ashing.

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Ashing, K.T., George, M. Exploring the efficacy of a paraprofessional delivered telephonic psychoeducational intervention on emotional well-being in African American breast cancer survivors. Support Care Cancer 28, 1163–1171 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00520-019-04899-7

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