“Now Everybody Is Thinking About Things Like That.” Young Adult Cancer Survivors Reimagining Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

BackgroundDiagnosed between ages 20 and 39 years, young adult (YA) cancer survivors have faced disruption to their lives well before the COVID-19 pandemic. Often seen as an at-risk population within cancer survivors, YAs experience the demands of a serious illness, such as cancer, alongside meeting the typical milestones of young adulthood and often have worse quality of life than their noncancer peers. There is a need to further study the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on specific populations, including YA cancer survivors (YACS), as it relates to work.ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to explore working YACS’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and identify facets of cancer survivorship that researchers can use to explore COVID-19 survivorship further.MethodsSecondary thematic analysis of 40 semistructured, qualitative interviews conducted through Zoom audio during the COVID-19 pandemic. YA hematologic cancer survivors were recruited through social media; they were eligible if they had completed active therapy, were within 5 years of their diagnosis, and working at the time of diagnosis. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and subjected to thematic content analysis.ResultsThemes surrounded COVID-19’s influence on working YACS’ experiences, with the overarching theme: “From solo to shared experience: A change in awareness and understanding.” A subtheme was “Lesson reaffirmed: Reimagining the work environment.”DiscussionThe consequences of COVID-19 on the overall quality of life for YACS are multilevel. Establishing the evidence for effective interventions to support YACS in the workplace, whether physical or virtual, is critically needed. Research is needed on YACS’ risk and resilience factors that could ultimately impact future health and quality of life.

Profiles of Work and Quality of Life among Young Adult Cancer Survivors

“…2020-4281), we recruited YA cancer survivors across the US through social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Additional details regarding recruitment and enrollment were previously reported (Ghazal et al, 2021a(Ghazal et al, , 2022. From April 2020 to August 2020, 252 YA cancer survivors expressed interest in the study by emailing the first author.…”

“…We captured work-related goals through our qualitative data collection of semi-structured interviews, which is further described in our previous work (Ghazal et al, 2021a(Ghazal et al, , 2021b. Briefly, the first author conducted individual participant interviews via Zoom audio using a semi-structured interview guide developed by the research team (Ghazal et al, 2021a(Ghazal et al, , 2022. To capture either "change" or "no change" in work-related goals, we asked participants at the beginning of the interview to describe their work-related goals prior to their cancer diagnosis.…”