# Enhancing Connections-Palliative Care: A Cancer Parenting Program for Patients with Advanced Cancer and Their Children

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON · 2022 · $743,114

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
 The purpose of the proposed study is to test the short-term efficacy of a cancer parenting education
program for child-rearing parents diagnosed with non-curable cancer, called Enhancing Connections-Palliative
Care Program (EC-PC). The program consists of fully scripted intervention sessions that will be delivered by
telephone by a specially trained patient educator. The EC-PC has been pilot tested and is ready for efficacy
testing. Parents will be eligible if they are diagnosed with non-curable cancer [determined by TNM Stage IV
cancer for hard tumors or 2 or more cycles of treatment failure with disease relapse in non-solid tumors]; read,
write and speak English as one of their languages of choice; have a child between the ages of 5-17 living in the
home at least 50% of the time with the ill parent and another non-ill parent or parent surrogate; and have access to a
telephone. Study participants will be recruited from 4 study centers: University of Washington/ Seattle Cancer
Care Alliance; Georgetown University/ Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center; University of Hawaii/ Hawai’i
Cancer Center, and Southeast Oncology/University of South Carolina. After completing signed informed
consent and baseline measures, parents will be randomized to an experimental or alternative treatment control
group. The experimental group will receive 5 telephone-delivered educational sessions every 2 weeks by
specially trained patient educators. The control group will be mailed “What Should I Say to the Children?”, a
guide for parents with advanced cancer, and be phone contacted by a specially trained patient educator who
will use a script to guide the parent on ways to gain the most information from the booklet. Primary endpoints
for testing efficacy will be assessed at 3-months post-baseline using Linear Mixed Models using an intent to
treat analysis and a per-protocol analysis. Five primary outcomes will assess efficacy: parents' anxiety and
depressed mood; parents' skills in helping their child manage the toll of the parents' cancer; parents' self-
efficacy in talking with their child about the child's cancer-related concerns; and the child's anxious/depressed
mood. The stability of changes will be described and evaluated at 6- and 9-months. With estimated Effect sizes
of .33-81 on the primary outcomes, the study will have greater than 0.80 power to detect a significant
difference between the experimental and control group, p=.05 (2-tailed).
 Our sample for analysis will be 492 diagnosed parents and their 492 non-ill coinhabiting partners/parent
surrogates of children ages 5-17. In addition to testing efficacy, the proposed study will test the theoretical
model of the intervention using structural equation modeling with confirmatory factor analysis; evaluate the
impact of the intervention on children’s behavioral-emotional adjustment whose parents die during the study
using Linear Mixed Models on data obtained from the non-ill parent; an...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10438211
- **Project number:** 1R01NR019987-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
- **Principal Investigator:** FRANCES Marcus LEWIS
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $743,114
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-04-06 → 2026-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10438211

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10438211, Enhancing Connections-Palliative Care: A Cancer Parenting Program for Patients with Advanced Cancer and Their Children (1R01NR019987-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10438211. Licensed CC0.

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