mHealth Behavioral Cancer Pain Intervention for Medically Underserved Patients

Summary

The efficacy of a mobile health (mHealth) behavioral cancer pain intervention designed to decrease pain and disability for breast cancer patients in medically underserved areas has not been investigated. The long-term goal of this work is to use mHealth technologies to facilitate wide-spread implementation of an efficacious behavioral cancer pain intervention - a non-pharmacological approach to pain management. The proposed project's objective is to demonstrate the efficacy of an innovative mobile health Pain Coping Skills Training (mPCST-Community) designed to meet the needs of breast cancer patients with pain in medically underserved areas. mPCST-Community addresses intervention barriers for patients in medically underserved areas as it is delivered with video-conferencing in the patients' community based oncology clinic by a remote therapist, is extended to the patients' home environment using simple mHealth technology, and is low-literacy adapted. The central hypothesis is that mPCST-Community will result in decreased pain compared to a mHealth education attention control group (mHealth-Ed). The rationale of this proposal is that if mPCST-Community is shown to be efficacious it will rapidly increase intervention access for individuals who receive their oncology care in medically underserved areas and ultimately reduce pain-related suffering. Guided by strong preliminary data, a randomized controlled trial will be used to pursue three specific aims: 1) Test the extent to which the mPCST-Community intervention reduces pain, fatigue, disability, and distress, 2) Examine self-efficacy and pain catastrophizing as mediators through which the mPCST-Community leads to reductions in pain, fatigue, disability, and distress, and 3) To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of mPCST-Community. For Aim 1, based on the study team's extensive work demonstrating the efficacy of in-person pain coping skills training protocols and pilot work showing promise for mPCST-Community, it is expected that mPCST-Community will lead to decreased pain as well as fatigue, disability, and distress compared to mHealth-Ed. For Aim 2, it is expected that the effects of mPCST-Community will be mediated by increased self-efficacy for pain control and decreased pain catastrophizing. For Aim 3, it is expected that mPCST-Community will demonstrate cost-effectiveness as assessed by all-cause medical resource use, participant and therapist time, and health utilities as well as successful overall accrual, high subject retention, and high intervention adherence.

Conditions

• Breast Cancer

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Mobile Health Pain Coping Skills Training (mPCST)

Participating in Mobile Health Pain Coping Skills Training will involve four 50-minute individual intervention sessions conducted over the course of 8 weeks with tele-video-conferencing at patient's community-based clinic. The therapist delivering the intervention will be at Duke University Medical Center, and patients will be at their community clinic.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Duke University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Tamara J Somers, Ph.D. · Duke University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

99 Years

Sex

FEMALE

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-10-20

Primary Completion

2024-12-20

Completion

2024-12-20

Countries

• United States

Study Locations