The next step is to develop culturally appropriate educational interventions that increase knowledge about breast cancer and screening guidelines, enhance health-related social support, and address barriers and perhaps cancer fatalism in older, low-income, African American women.

AA women with breast cancer use more positive religious coping and experience less distress and greater spiritual well-being, but catastrophizing has a negative effect on spiritual well-being. Nurses need to reinforce positive coping patterns for AA women with cancer.

Breast cancer treatment can have a profound influence on a woman's physical, psychological, social, and spiritual well-being. Anxiety, depression, anger, fatigue, and fear of recurrence are common responses to a diagnosis of breast cancer and undergoing breast cancer treatment. Women develop their own coping strategies for the pain and other effects of treatment. However, it is unclear whether there is a relationship between adaptation to pain and psychological distress during breast cancer treatment. Findings from the present study reveal that breast cancer patients who have better pain coping strategies also have lower levels of anxiety, fatigue and depression. These results suggest that pain coping interventions may reduce fatigue and psychological distress among women with breast cancer.

This article highlights the experiences of the Health Wise Church Project, a community outreach initiative between a diverse group of African American churches and a university health education program. The objective of the program was to develop early detection and illness prevention networks among older church members. Not all partnerships results in long-term collaborations, and this article makes a clear distinction between different types of "working together" arrangements. The project discussed in this article presents a four-stage model to illustrate how organizations achieve collaborative partnerships. Involving community partners in the early phase of project planning contributed to the success of the church-university collaboration. This type of shared planning helped to sustain community interest during the project's implementation.