Background: Despite considerable evidence for healthy lifestyle interventions in cancer survivors, they are not incorporated into routine cancer care. In order to facilitate translation into practice, we engaged a range of cancer control policy and practice partners, including the Cancer Councils, State Ministries of Health and cancer clinicians.
Methods: This talk will describe the feasibility and patient-reported outcomes from two telephone-based lifestyle health coaching services that are being delivered in collaboration with cancer control partners: 1) Healthy Living after Cancer service (HLaC) is a six-month telephone-delivered program offered free of charge by Cancer Councils NSW, VIC, SA and WA targeting physical activity, healthy eating and modest weight loss and available to any adult cancer survivor treated with curative intent following primary treatment; 2) Get Healthy Service (GHS) is a similar six-month program offered by NSW Ministry of Health and available to any adult - here, we trialled its suitability for women following treatment for breast cancer. Thus, we are able to compare outcomes from a program tailored for cancer survivors to one targeting the general public.
Results: To date, the Cancer Councils have enrolled over 300 participants into HLaC (majority women with breast cancer), while the GHS was trialled with 53 women with breast cancer referred from a breast cancer clinic in NSW. The two programs show remarkably similar results, both with high participant satisfaction ratings, 62% program completion rates and weight loss of approximately 2.5kg. No serious adverse events were reported in either program.
Conclusions: While program participants and providers have a preference for cancer-specific programs, results here show that both programs can be safely and effectively delivered to achieve improvements in lifestyle in cancer survivors. With growing numbers of cancer survivors and a scarcity of preventive health resources, these results have important implications for cancer care delivery.