CHESS (Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System), an innovative internet-based program providing information, social support, and skills training, has been demonstrated to improve the quality of life of cancer patients. This randomized controlled trial will examine the efficacy of a combined intervention using CHESS and a human Cancer Mentor, and compare it against a control condition in which patients are given access to the Internet only (rapidly becoming a de facto standard information care situation), CHESS alone, and the human Cancer Mentor alone. Participants will be followed for 56 weeks to assess quality of life, social support, affect, and cost of providing the interventions. We propose to measure the effect of these conditions on the primary outcome of patient quality of life. Secondary outcomes include social support, affect, and cost of providing the interventions. Additional analyses will examine mediating processes such as satisfaction with the medical system, health self-efficacy (including information competence), knowledge of their own condition, sense of expert watching over them (and trust in those experts) and information overload.
Participants in this multi-site study will be recruited from The University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center; Hartford Hospital; and The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. This study is one of three projects on a Center of Excellence in Cancer Communication Research grant, awarded to researchers at the University of Wisconsin (David Gustafson, Ph.D., Principal Investigator). The aims include:- To examine differences among the study conditions on the primary outcome measure of quality of life.
- To measure a number of potential intervening processes, so that it can determine how CHESS and the Cancer Mentor produce associated quality-of-life benefits.
- To determine the costs of providing each study condition.
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