Caregivers-Patients Support to Latinx Coping with Advanced-Cancer

Project Summary The goal of this K08 is to prepare the PI, to receive hands-on experience in implementation and dissemination, designing and leading randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in palliative care, and improve grant writing skills to become an independent R01-funded investigator. Hispanic/Latinx (H/L) communities experience disparate general health outcomes and are more

likely to be diagnosed with advanced cancer when compared to non-H/L populations. H/L patients experiencing advanced cancer and their caregivers are at an increased risk for unmet psychosocial needs; this K08 will allow the PI to focus on this important gap in minority health care. The research goal of this proposal is to refine and pilot an intervention titled: Caregivers

Patients Support to Latinx Coping with Advanced Cancer (CASA), a five-session, 60-minute each telehealth series for patient-caregiver dyads. The long-term training goal of this application is to enable the applicant (PI) to become an independent investigator as a cultural adaptation expert on psychosocial interventions in health disparity research. The rationale for this project is that it

will lay the groundwork for a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) testing the efficacy of CASA. It will also assess the implementation of an innovative method to deliver the CASA intervention. This study aims to use the collaborative intervention planning framework and ORBIT model to modify and assess the feasibility and preliminary effect of the CASA intervention. The overall impact of

this study is to improve access to psychosocial, culturally adapted interventions among H/L patients and caregivers coping with advanced cancer. The Specific Aims are as follows: Aim 1. Use a collaborative intervention planning framework with providers and community stakeholders to refine study procedures prior to the implementation of a pilot randomized

controlled trial. Aim 2: To train community members as patient recruiters and clinical psychology doctoral students as interventionists of the CASA intervention. Aim 3: To implement a pilot randomized controlled trial to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and potential efficacy of the CASA intervention with Hispanic/Latinx dyads coping with cancer.