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American Indian Women Cancer Survivors’ Spiritual and Religious Coping Practices

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Abstract

Despite AI women’s cancer disparities being a public health concern, a dearth of research on this populations’ spiritual coping poses a barrier to redressing such disparities. The purpose of this article was to explore AI women cancer survivors’ spiritual and religious coping. This qualitative descriptive study included a sample of 43 AI women cancer survivors. Qualitative content analysis revealed that 93% of AI women cancer survivors used a variety of AI spiritual coping, religious coping, and/or a mixture of the two. Results reveal the prevalence of AI spiritual coping, with traditional AI spiritual practices being particularly common.

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Funding

This research was supported by funding from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (U54MD008164 by Elliott) from the National Institutes of Health to Soonhee Roh, PhD. This work was also supported, in part, by Award K12HD043451 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (Krousel-Wood-PI; Catherine McKinley-Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) Scholar). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIA or the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Finally, this work was supported in part by U54 GM104940 from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health, which funds the Louisiana Clinical and Translational Science Center. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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Contributions

SR is responsible for the overall content as a guarantor. All authors (i.e., Dr. CM, Dr. SR, and Dr. Y-SL) significantly contributed to the following article components: (a) conceptualization of the research goals and aims; (b) methodology, including its design and development; (c) validation, such as the adherence to the fidelity to the methodology and its reproducibility; (d) formal analysis, including data analysis of the raw data and its organization; (e) resources, including analysis tools and computing resources; (f) article writing, including the original draft and its revisions. Dr. SR oversaw supervision, project administration, and funding acquisition, whereas Dr. Roh and Dr. Lee were involved in the investigation of the research process, specifically the data collection component.

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Correspondence to Catherine E. McKinley.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The approvals of the following Institutional Review Boards were obtained prior to data collection: (a) University of South Dakota, (b) Avera McKennan Hospital, (c) Rapid City Regional Health, and (d) Sanford Research center.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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McKinley, C.E., Roh, S. & Lee, YS. American Indian Women Cancer Survivors’ Spiritual and Religious Coping Practices. J Relig Health 59, 2430–2441 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-020-01023-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-020-01023-6

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