Quality of life among breast cancer survivors

San Francisco State University, San Francisco CA

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Abstract

We propose to study the trajectory of quality of life for a two-year period in four distinct subgroups of breast cancer survivors: African-American, Asian-American, Latina, and white American women. The primary goal of our project is to study how being a breast cancer survivor affects the trajectory of quality of life in different race/ethnic groups, and how that relationship is modified by social support, depression, and spirituality. We aim to 1) to adjust and supplement existing measures of quality of life, social support, depression, and spirituality for breast cancer survivors in relation to racial/ethnic and cultural variation, 2) to study quantitatively trajectories of quality of life, social support, depression, and spirituality for two years using cross-culturally comparable quantitative measures and 3) to determine the degree to which social support, spirituality and depression explain and interpret the relationship between race/ethnicity and the trajectory of quality of life among breast cancer survivors, independently of differences in clinical prognosis at the end of treatment and/or stage of disease at diagnosis. These aims will be pursued in two samples of breast cancer survivors: 20 survivors, five from each race/ethnic group, who will participate in three depth interviews over the course of one year to provide the qualitative data to revise standard measures of quality of life, social support, spirituality, and depression to make them more suitable for comparisons between race and ethnic groups; 135 survivors in roughly equal numbers from each race/ethnic group who will be given a brief interview at intake and in four follow-up contacts over two years to provide culturally-comparable quantitative longitudinal data to test hypotheses about race/ethnic differentials in trajectories of quality of life and its determinants.