Corporate Communication

The increased usage of online cancer support groups as a resource for health-related information and social support has sparked numerous discussions about the role of online support in healthcare. However, little is known about the role of social-networking groups focused on supporting adolescents and young adults (AYAs) dealing with cancer. The current investigation report findings from a content analysis designed to explore how AYAs use an online support group to meet their psychosocial needs. Overall, members of the community focused on exchanging emotional and informational support, coping with difficult emotions through expression, describing experiences of
being an AYA dealing with cancer through language (metaphors), enacting identity through evaluations of the new normal (life with and after cancer), and communicating membership as an AYA with cancer. This study highlights the unique needs of the AYA cancer community and offers a preliminary roadmap for practitioners, and network members, such as family and friends, to attempt to meet the needs of this unique community.

Objective
To describe topics, needs, and concerns related to nutrition and exercise that adolescents and young adults affected by a serious illness (cancer) discuss online.

Methods
Investigators conducted a qualitative content analysis of messages related to nutrition and exercise posted on an online young adult cancer forum.

Results
AYAs described several functions achieved through nutrition and exercise, such as fighting cancer, losing weight, obtaining nutrients despite side effects of treatment, promoting general health, enjoyment, and promoting mental/emotional health. AYAs also discussed several problems that interfere with nutrition and exercise goals, such as side effects of steroids, physiological problems with eating, safety concerns or physical limitations due to treatment, poor follow through with behavioral change, stress, and low energy.

Conclusion
AYAs discuss specific ways nutrition and exercise help achieve a variety of functions that may be physical or psychological, cancer-specific or general. AYAs describe several concerns and barriers that impede their nutrition and exercise goals.

Practice implications
Clinicians should also consider relevant medical and personal variables that partly determine nutrition and exercise concerns. Clinicians can anticipate barriers to desired nutrition/exercise change and develop interventions that address these barriers in appropriately tailored ways, including using digital media.

The present study examined how turning points reported by individuals in on-again/off-again (on–off) relationships reflected relationship trajectories. Participants (N = 581) completed an online Retrospective Interview Technique asking them to report on up to 10 turning points. Participants indicated their commitment level at each turning point. Based on the variations in commitment across turning points, five trajectories emerged. Trajectory groups were compared regarding relational stability factors. Results suggest that on–off partners with a steady-low commitment trajectory reported less stability than individuals with steady-high commitment. Additionally, partners in the fluctuating trajectory, which would seemingly represent less stability, reported moderate perceptions of their relationships, faring better than the low-steady commitment group. Overall, findings add to an understanding of how to best characterize on–off relationships.

Background: Health and psychosocial outcomes for young adults affected by cancer have minimally improved in decades, partially due to lack of relevant support and information.  Considering major unmet needs involve nutrition and exercise, it is important to understand how they handle information about food and fitness in managing their cancer experiences. 

Objective: Using the theory of illness trajectories as a framework, we explored how four lines of work associated with living with a chronic illness such as cancer (illness, everyday life, biographical, and the recently explicated construct of communication work) impacts, and is impacted by, nutrition and exercise concerns.

Methods: Following a search to extract all nutrition- and exercise-related content from the prior three years (January 2008 to February 2011), a sample of more than 1,000 posts from an online support community for young adults affected by cancer were qualitatively analyzed employing iterative, constant comparison techniques. Sensitized by illness trajectory research and related concepts, three coders worked over four months to examine the English-language, de-identified text files of content.

Results: An analysis of discussion board threads in an online community for young adults dealing with cancer shows that nutrition and exercise needs affect the young adults’ illness trajectories, including their management of illness, everyday life, biographical, and communication work. Further, this article helps validate development of the “communication work” variable, explores the “mass personal” interplay of mediated and interpersonal communication channels, and expands illness trajectory work to a younger demographic than investigated in prior research.

Conclusions: Applying the valuable concepts of illness, everyday life, biographical, and communication work provides a more nuanced understanding of how young adults affected by cancer handle exercise and nutrition needs. This knowledge can help provide support and interventional guidance for the well-documented psychosocial challenges particular to this demographic as they manage the adversities inherent in a young adult cancer diagnosis. The research also helps explain how these young adults meet communication needs in a “mass personal” way that employs multiple communication channels to meet goals and thus might be more effectively reached in a digital world.

Effectively conveying risks and hazards in medical disclosure and informed consent documentation is a crucial type of communication. However, existing protocols typically do not meet the needs of patients or practitioners. In the present study, we advance a reconceptualization of obtaining written informed consent by analyzing it as a process of uncertainty management rather than a matter of document readability and recall. Results of this randomized trial indicated that patients who reviewed a simplified consent document reported greater comprehension of medico-legal terminology and lower uncertainty about the document, although they did not evince greater self-efficacy. Health literacy was a significant moderator of the relationship between consent form version and comprehension.