Improving Outcomes in Early Menopause After Cancer

Summary

The goal of this study is to create and test a new program led by nurse navigators to help women who experience early menopause after cancer. The program includes personalized menopause education, decision support, and skills to manage menopause symptoms. The main questions it aims to answer are: 1. Is the program easy to join, engaging, and well-received by participants? 2. Does the program group show greater improvements in knowledge, decision-making, confidence, and menopause symptom management compared to the control group? Participants will complete sessions of either the program being tested or an educational control program with a nurse navigator via video. Participants will also complete questionnaires when they start the study and again about 10 weeks later.

Detailed Description

The study aims to develop and pilot test a novel nurse navigator-delivered intervention for women experiencing premature and early menopause after cancer. The proposed intervention integrates 1) personalized, risk-based menopause health education and decision support, 2) skills derived from patient activation theory to increase self-efficacy and engagement in menopause self-management, and 3) cognitive-behavioral theory-based skills (e.g., stress management, relaxation techniques, challenging unhelpful thoughts, and activity pacing) for menopause symptom management. Phase I: Develop and refine an intervention for women experiencing premature or early menopause after cancer. The intervention content will be developed and refined with input and review by women cancer survivors experiencing premature or early menopause (N=24) and medical providers (N=24) who care for this population. The intervention will be further refined with input and review by our study advisory council. Next, user testing (N=9) will be conducted to guide further refinement of content, format and procedures and to obtain feedback for finalizing the intervention protocol that will then be tested in a small pilot randomized controlled trial. Phase II: Pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) to examine the feasibility and acceptability of the developed intervention. A new sample of female cancer survivors experiencing premature or early menopause will be randomized to receive the intervention or educational materials for cancer survivors developed by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to examine the feasibility of study recruitment, participant retention and acceptability.

Eligibility Criteria

Interventions