Research Abstract

As a medical sociologist, I use mixed methods to study the vital role and experiences of cancer caregivers and their impact on patients and their care. I focus on understudied caregiving populations including individuals of color, rural caregivers, and those caring at a distance. I am particularly interested in adult-children caring for a parent with advanced cancer, a vastly understudied population that constitutes half of cancer caregivers in the United States. I am presently designing the first known intervention tailored to adult-child caregivers. The intervention will target caregivers’ and patients’ communication with each other and with their social networks. Importantly, the intervention will also address urban-rural disparities among caregivers and patients by tackling issues that rural caregivers face. My long-term research goal is to understand how the communication of families facing cancer shapes their quality of life to build rigorously researched and novel, disseminable interventions to improve families’ lives.