Spirituality-Based Intervention for African American Women with Breast Cancer. Addendum

摘要

Because social support has been shown to have value in decreasing morbidity and possibly in increasing length of survival in cancer patients, the objective of the study are: 1) to utilize a network of oncology services, churches, and community organizations to recruit African American women diagnosed with breast cancer for project participation; 2) to implement the spiritual-based intervention; 3) to assess the efficacy of the intervention to positively impact treatment-related outcomes; and 4) to refine the intervention for broader dissemination. The intervention involves and experimental/control group design approach. The experimental support group (Intervention group) will receive the Spiritual-based support intervention. There will be two control groups; control group A will include participants in a traditional support group model and control group B will include individuals who receive the standard care consisting of no additional structured support. An Advisory Committee comprised of breast cancer survivors and local clergy will provide guidance to project implementation. Data will be gathered through a pre-test at baseline (TI), a post test at the conclusion of the 7 months intervention (T2), and at a three month follow up at the end of the support group sessions (T3).