Cancer Information Service Research Consortium: Years 2006-2011 Program Narrative and Overview

OBJECTIVES:

Primary

• Determine whether an innovative multimedia educational program will help newly diagnosed prostate (project 1) and breast (project 2) cancer patients prepare for their journey as cancer patients, promote informed treatment decision-making and reduce cancer-specific distress, and among breast cancer patients at re-entry, facilitate an informed re-entry transition to cancer survivorship and reduce cancer-specific distress (project 3).
• Determine whether having Cancer Information Service (CIS) Information Specialists make a scheduled telephone callback to callers in project 3 will augment and support use of the CIS Research Consortium (CISRC) multimedia educational programs and further enhance the study outcomes examined in this program of research.
• Determine whether the hypothesized mediational variables account for significant intervention effects in each of the three component projects.
• Examine potential moderator variables to assess potential differences in intervention efficacy by selected subgroups (e.g., age, education) within each component project.
• Conduct an in-depth tracking study of utilization patterns for a detailed description of different patterns of use, as well as elucidating those components or modules within the program that had differential utilization by participants.
• Assist the CIS and other similar cancer information systems in disseminating one or more of the CISRC interventions should they prove effective in this program of research.

Secondary

• Conduct secondary analyses across projects (i.e., perceived need for and benefit from the CISRC interventions and intervention efficacy across three high priority cancer patient populations) that will be made possible by the use of a common theoretical framework, the same or similar intervention and research design across projects, and a common set of endpoints.