Internet-Based Physical Activity Intervention Targeting Young Adult Cancer Survivors

Abstract

Young adults who have been treated for cancer face several health and psychosocial risks. To minimize these risks, is it imperative that they address any modifiable risk factors, such as sedentary lifestyle. Unfortunately, more than half of young adult cancer survivors remain sedentary. To facilitate the adoption of physical activity (PA) in this population-potentially reducing health and psychosocial risks-we developed and pilot tested an internet-based PA intervention for young survivors. Eighteen young adults, aged 18 to 39, who had been diagnosed with cancer in the past 10 years were recruited. Participants were randomized to receive access to the PA website for 12 weeks or information about other cancer-related websites. Intervention feasibility and acceptability was assessed only among those in the PA website group; PA and psychosocial outcomes (mood, fatigue) were assessed in both groups. Findings revealed that 86% of participants in the PA website group would recommend the intervention to others and most (71%) were "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with it. Further, 100% rated getting onto the website as "very easy" and 86% rated the information on the site as "very easy" to understand. The logging feature, followed by the goal-setting feature, were most often accessed by participants. Participants also rated the graphing and stage-matched manual features as helpful. Estimates of effect sizes for between-group differences at 12 weeks were medium for PA outcomes and large for psychosocial outcomes. This internet-based PA intervention targeting young adult cancer survivors is feasible and acceptable and may benefit this population.

A Lifestyle Intervention via Email in Minority Breast Cancer Survivors: Randomized Parallel-Group Feasibility Study (Preprint)

“…However, greater improvements in moderate to vigorous physical activity were observed here. Prior studies have observed improvements in moderate to vigorous physical activity that ranged from 18-minutes [24] to 103-minutes [30], whereas we observed a 250-minutes increase in our complete-case and 147-minute increase in our intent-totreat analyses. Despite the large improvements we observed, the effect size comparing conditions were small in magnitude.…”

“…Our feasibility data were favorable, but attrition rates were high. The study's attrition rate was comparable to previous web-based intervention studies [48][49][50], but higher than others [24,26,[29][30][31]34]. We believe that functionality challenges contributed to high attrition rates.…”

“…Web-based approaches offer a potential to overcome both provider and participant (cost, time, and distance) barriers [21]. More recently, there has been an increase in advocacy for Web-based interventions among cancer survivors [22,23], as well as interventions designed for cancer survivors [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31], with several demonstrating improvements in lifestyle behaviors [28,29,[31][32][33][34].…”

A Feasibility Study to Measure Physical Activity, Fatigue, Sleep–Wake Disturbances, and Depression in Young Adults During Chemotherapy

“…The high enrollment rate of YAs who were in early treatment confirms their willingness to participate in PA studies, which is consistent with earlier studies indicating that YA survivors are interested in learning about PA. 18,19 The study completion rate of 71% is within range of PA studies with older adult cancer patients during treatment 3 and somewhat lower than other longitudinal studies with YA survivors of AYA cancers. [19][20][21] As a measure of functional capacity, the 6MWT was easy and safe for the YAs to complete. Their walk distances showed a wide range of exercise capacity-as low as 50% and as high as 90%-when compared to healthy persons of comparable age, gender, height, and weight.…”

Strategies to promote regular exercise in adolescent and young adult cancer survivors

“…Careful readings of the 22 full manuscripts further reduced the field to nine studies that met all inclusion criteria. [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42] Of these studies, six included adolescent survivors, two addressed young adult survivors only, and one included both young adult and adolescent survivors. Interventions were heterogeneous across study design (nonrandomized, noncontrolled versus randomized, controlled trial), sample sizes (range =10-251), ages (range =3-39 years of age), diagnoses (acute lymphoblastic leukemia [ALL], brain tumor, mixed diagnoses), and points of intervention (on-treatment, immediate postcompletion of treatment, long-term survivorship).…”