Oncology Associated Symptoms & Individualized Strategies

Nearly 20% of Americans and 41% of Iowans live in rural or non-metropolitan areas.(1) Lack of access to providers, long travel distances, and a disconnected health system contribute to increased distress and lower quality-of-life (QOL) in people with advanced cancer living in rural areas. (2) In the state of Iowa, 94% of rural residents have high-speed internet access. (3) The University of Iowa Health Care (UIHC) eHealth eNovation Center has developed the infrastructure to address the health care access gap in Iowa. The combination of wide availability of high-speed internet and the eHealth network provides an opportunity to develop and test interventions that leverage this infrastructure in order to address this important palliative care gap. This is a pilot study to evaluate the feasibility of an eHealth self-management intervention for cancer symptom management. The intervention consists of a web-application that provides tailored educational information about cancer symptoms and a monitoring platform to track symptom distress and strategies used to manage them. Participants will also receive e-visits from a research nurse or research assistant via UIHC eHealth and eNovation video platform. The purpose of this study is obtain feasibility data about the intervention for a future RCT and to evaluate the OASIS intervention with patients living in rural Iowa receiving treatment for advanced cancer. The specific aims are: 1. to evaluate the feasibility of the OASIS intervention to self-manage symptoms of rural patients with advanced cancer, including a) recruitment and retention, b) use patterns, c) usability of each component of the intervention (i.e., the e-visit platform and the web-application), d) acceptability of the intervention and study (i.e., satisfaction, barriers and facilitators to use, burden); and 2. to determine preliminary effects of the intervention on self-management behaviors and symptom severity, symptom distress, and symptom interference.