Aims: Survivorship care can prevent or mitigate the long-term effects of childhood cancer and its treatment.1 Yet, many survivors do not access survivorship care for various reasons. ‘Engage’ promotes equitable access and addresses the known challenges of self-managing survivors’ complex health needs.2 Our pilot showed that Engage is acceptable to survivors and feasible to deliver.3 This study evaluates Engage’s effectiveness to increase survivors’ self-efficacy (confidence in managing one’s health), health-related quality of life (HRQoL), and survivors’ satisfaction with, and access to, care.
Methods: Engage is a distance-delivered program involving a nurse-led assessment of survivors’ cancer history/current health, a multidisciplinary review, and personalised patient-education/recommendations for survivors and their general practitioner. We recruited long-term childhood cancer survivors (>5 years post-diagnosis) of any age, who were treated at Sydney Children’s Hospital. Participants were disengaged (had not received comprehensive cancer-related care in >2-years). We assessed survivors’ outcomes pre-intervention and 1- and 6-months post-intervention.
Results: To date, 63 survivors have participated (53% male, mean age=30 years, median time since treatment completion=19 years, 23% living rurally/remotely). Survivors’ self-efficacy scores significantly increased 1-month post-intervention (pre-intervention=8.9 versus 1-month=11.1, p=0.006), were sustained at 6-months post-intervention (6-months=11.4, p=0.003), and translated to 56% of survivors reporting improved self-efficacy (6-months). Survivors’ HRQoL scores remained high 1-month post-intervention (pre-intervention=0.88 versus 1-month=0.89) and had significantly increased by 6-months post-intervention (6-months=0.92, p=0.047). Survivors reported a significant increase in satisfaction with cancer-related care (57% were satisfied pre-intervention, rising to 87% and 88% at 1- and 6-months post-intervention, p=0.001). Survivors particularly valued the telehealth delivery of Engage, sharing that Engage was “fast and easy to do, given that it could be completed …from my own home”.
Conclusions: Engage appears to improve survivors’ self-efficacy, HRQoL, satisfaction with, and access to, survivorship care. This innovative program supports survivors and their general practitioners to manage survivors’ complex, long-term health problems.