Rural breast cancer survivors: exercise preferences and their determinants

Abstract

Objective: As a first step in planning interventions to promote exercise in rural breast cancer survivors (BCS), we sought to determine the exercise preferences of rural BCS and to identify the major determinants of these preferences.Methods: Self-administered mail survey to a population-based sample from a state cancer registry.Results: Among the 483 respondents, 96% were White with mean education of 1372.5 years and mean months since diagnosis of 39.0721.5. Only 19% reported X150 min of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week. Although up to half were open to various counseling options, the most popular options were counseling after treatment (36%), face-to-face (47%), and from an exercise specialist (40%). Rural BCS preferred home-based (63%), unsupervised (47%), moderate intensity exercise (65%) that was primarily walking. The strongest preference correlates include higher education with exercise specialist, higher environment score with outdoors, more comorbidities with low intensity and counseling after cancer treatment, higher social support with exercising with friends or family, sedentary or insufficient physical activity with low intensity, and lower household income with preferring supervised exercise.Conclusions: Interventions designed to promote exercise among rural BCS are needed. Such interventions should consider the environmental aspects of this population and include multiple options based on the preferences of targeted subgroups.

Exercise in Clinical Cancer Care: A Call to Action and Program Development Description

“…Finally, educational seminars on physical activity for cancer survivors are offered on a monthly basis to improve the understanding of the benefits of an active lifestyle. The foregoing program components accommodate the identified preferences of cancer survivors for access to a multifaceted approach to exercise, including flexibility in structure, social support, print educational material, home-based exercise equipment and instruction, and routine follow-up from the cancer exercise specialists 28,29,31,32,34,37,[40][41][42][43][44]82 .…”

The impact of physical activity on cancer prevention and survivorship

“…Furthermore, several factors have been identified as determining preference for and interest in such a program including age, current level of PA, educational history, income, obesity, stage of cancer, time elapsed since diagnosis, type of treatment, and comorbidity [40,68,[73][74][75][76]. Other factors are self-efficacy, enjoyment of PA, social support, sensory disturbance, depression, and fatigue [75,77]. Instituting PAenhancing interventions requires that patients be made aware of the therapeutic purpose, and that patients are interested in the selected activity, and have the capability, opportunity, and inclination to perform it.…”

Fee-for-Service Cancer Rehabilitation Programs Improve Health-Related Quality of Life

“…The exercise self-efficacy questionnaire contained 5 items (answered on an 11-point Likert scale) about the responder's confidence in his or her ability to persist with exercise in various situations 27 . Exercise enjoyment was measured by a single question that asked participants to rate (on a 5-point Likert scale) their enjoyment of engaging in regular exercise 28 . The exercise barriers questionnaire asked participants to rank (on a 5-point Likert scale) how often 21 different barriers interfered with exercise in the preceding month 28 .…”