Background
ENRICHing Survivorship is a holistic 8-week face to face program that aims to facilitate health behaviour change and improve emotional wellbeing of cancer survivors and carers. The Program is made up of: Nutrition and Exercise (6 sessions); Yoga/Mindfulness (1 session); Peer Support (1 session).
Method and sample
At the conclusion of the Program, participants were asked to complete a survey that assessed: their level of knowledge, understanding, skill and confidence (retrospective pre/post questions), behaviour changes, self-reported changes in general health, fatigue, sleep patterns, and mood; and basic demographics.
Most participants were female (78%); had a previous cancer diagnosis (78%); 41% were aged 51-60. Nearly three-quarters of all participants had attended between 5 and 8 sessions.
Results*
Nutrition and exercise: Participants gained a greater understanding of the importance of a healthy diet and exercise*; increased their knowledge regarding a balanced diet and exercises they could perform to improve their health*; felt more confident to include these aspects into their lives*; and gained skills around the selection of healthy options and exercise safety*.
Around 70% of participants noted that they were now including healthy foods into their diet more often; and had increased the amount of exercise they did weekly.
Peer support: Participants found it of benefit to be around others who were in a similar situation, they gained knowledge about issues facing survivors*, and had their experience normalised through recognising that others share similar concerns*.
Yoga/mindfulness: Raised awareness of the importance of the practice, and gave people the skill, knowledge and confidence to make it part of their life*.
Overall health and well-being: Self-reported improvements were noted for general health, with 84% of participants indicating they felt somewhat or much better; 65% noted improvements in their level of fatigue; 67% had better sleeping habits; 80% noted an improvement in feelings of worry and anxiety; and 85% noted an improvement in their feelings of sadness and depression.
Conclusions
Bringing together a combination of practical survivorship support programs into one holistic program provides significant benefit to cancer survivors and their carers.
* Notes statistically significant difference in pre-and-post scores, as measured by paired sample t-test, p<.001