Stanford Psychiatry’s Ranak Trivedi awarded grant researching how to alleviate stress, loneliness, and social isolation among South Asian families managing breast cancer

We are pleased to announce that Stanford Psychiatry’s Ranak Trivedi, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, has received a grant from the National Cancer Institute to research how to alleviate stress, loneliness, and social isolation among South Asian families managing breast cancer.

South Asian heritage and breast cancer are intersecting vulnerabilities for breast cancer survivors and their family caregivers. Cultural factors that amplify the stress, social isolation, and loneliness are known to affect survivors and caregivers, and can inhibit breast cancer self-management. Yet, there are no dyadic behavioral interventions to address these psychosocial needs in the South Asian cultural context. The long-term goal of this research is to develop a culturally adapted behavioral intervention to support self-management among South Asian cancer survivors and their caregivers.

The study team will adapt an existing dyadic self-management intervention, called web-SUCCEED (web-based Self-care Using Collaborative Coping EnhancEment in Diseases), and conduct a pilot randomized trial to assess the feasibility of recruitment, retention, randomization, and measures — as well as the acceptability of randomization and intervention. All activities will be guided by a community advisory board comprising diverse, multilingual South Asian participants. The results will have an immediate positive impact by laying the groundwork for further intervention development, and for prospective observational studies to understand the experience of South Asians managing breast cancer — an understudied group that is at high risk for healthcare disparities.

“There are no behavioral interventions that address the unique cultural and psychosocial needs of South Asian breast cancer survivors and their family caregivers,” says Dr. Trivedi. “We will address this gap by developing a culturally attuned behavioral intervention in close collaboration with diverse stakeholders — including South Asian breast cancer survivors, South Asian family caregivers, and other key community members.”

Dr. Trivedi’s team in the Framily and Mental Health Lab focuses on disease management by patients and the "framily" (family members and friends who are like family) who care for them. More specifically, the lab aims to identify barriers and facilitators of chronic illness self-management, understand dyadic relationships between patients and caregivers in managing chronic illnesses, developing framily centered self-management programs, and create culturally attuned approaches to disease management. Recent publications related to this work include “Clinic-based Assessment and Support for Family Caregivers of Patients With Cancer: Results of a Feasibility Study” published in Cancer Care Research Online, and “Cancer Survivorship at Stanford Cancer Institute” published in the Journal of Cancer Survivorship.
 

More Information

For more details about this project, visit NIH RePORTER.