Calm for Cancer Sleep Disturbance

Cancer and cancer treatment often lead patients and survivors to experience a host of chronic symptoms, of which sleep disturbances are a major concern. Smartphone-based meditation via an already-developed app (i.e., Calm) is a unique and novel way of providing a potentially helpful symptom-management strategy to cancer patients and survivors. Our hypothesis is that cancer patients/survivors using the Calm smartphone app for eight weeks will see improved sleep disturbance (primary outcome) as well as anxiety, depression, pain intensity, global health, quality of life, emotional regulation, and mindfulness when compared to a time and attention-matched health education podcast control group. Cancer patients/survivors (n=300) will be randomly assigned to an intervention or control group for eight weeks, with study outcome measurement occurring at baseline, post-intervention (i.e., week eight), and follow-up (i.e., week 20).