Abstract
Background
African Americans with chronic conditions have reported the importance of spirituality in their lives. Aspects of spirituality have been shown to be related to physical activity (PA) and sleep, and PA and sleep affect quality of life (QOL). This study examined the association between spirituality, PA, and sleep in long-term African American breast cancer survivors.
Methods
This cross-sectional study included 323 breast cancer survivors who previously participated in a case-only study. During 2015–2016, participants completed a questionnaire focused on survivorship that used validated measures for spirituality, PA, and sleep. Adjusted binary and multinomial logistic regression models estimated odds ratios (aORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the associations of spirituality with total PA, meeting PA guidelines, sleep duration, and sleep medication.
Results
The mean age at diagnosis was 54.8 (SD = 9.89) years. The range of spirituality scores was 7–48 (median = 44). Among participants who had a score ≥ 44, 59% had high total PA, 61% met PA guidelines, 59% had high sleep duration, and 55% did not use sleep medication. Higher spirituality score was associated with higher total PA (aOR for ≥ 681 min/week: 1.90, 95% CI: 1.03–3.50), meeting PA guidelines (aOR: 1.78, 95% CI: 1.06–2.98), sleep duration > 7 h/night (aOR: 1.72, 95% CI 1.05–2.83), and lack of sleep medication use (aOR: 0.45, 95% CI: 0.24–0.84).
Conclusion
In African American long-term breast cancer survivors, a higher spirituality score increased the likelihood of greater PA and high sleep duration. These results indicate that interventions surrounding spirituality may benefit the QOL of African American breast cancer survivors.
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Data Availability
The data used for this research study are not available to external researchers at this time.
Code Availability
Available upon request.
Abbreviations
- SF-36:
-
36-item short form survey
- AABL:
-
African American Breast Cancer Long-Term Survivorship Study
- BMI:
-
Body mass index
- FACIT-Sp-12:
-
Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy Spiritual Well-Being 12
- HR-QOL:
-
Health-related quality of life
- PA:
-
Physical activity
- PSQI:
-
Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index
- QOL:
-
Quality of life
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Acknowledgements
We thank the participants of the AABL Survivorship Study. We thank Mary Kay Fadden for her guidance and help with the data collection and questionnaire methods. We thank Shantel Moore for collecting all telephone interview data and day-to-day recruitment and coordination of the AABL study.
Funding
The original parent case-only study was funded by National Cancer Institute grants U54CA163069, U54CA163072, and R03CA192214. The AABL study was supported by grant K07CA184257 from the National Cancer Institute.
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Sarah Nechuta and Maureen Sanderson conceived and designed the AABL Survivorship Study. Sarah Nechuta and Ally Goerge conceived the research question and analysis design for this secondary data analysis with AABL Survivorship data. The analysis was performed by Ally Goerge and replicated by Sarah Nechuta. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Ally Goerge. All authors provided comments on the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval for the AABL study was obtained from Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Meharry Medical College. All study participants provided written informed consent.
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The authors declare no competing interests.
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Goerge, A., Sanderson, M., Flewellen, C. et al. The Role of Spirituality on Physical Activity and Sleep Among African American Long-Term Breast Cancer Survivors. J. Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-023-01791-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-023-01791-3