Online Problem Solving Skills Training

Parents of children newly diagnosed with cancer experience depression and anxiety, especially in the first several months of treatment. Bright IDEAS, an 8-session problem-solving skills training (PSST) program has been used in studies with more than 900 mothers including more than 125 monolingual Spanish-speaking mothers. It has been shown to significantly decrease mothers' distress and to particularly benefit Latina immigrants. This past spring, the NCI/NIH designated Bright IDEAS as a Research-Tested Intervention Program and has included it in the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices. To date, Bright IDEAS has been available to mothers at only a few cancer centers with specially trained personnel. This proposal is designed to bring Bright IDEAS on-line to make it available to mothers and fathers 24/7 anywhere with Internet access. The investigators will carefully analyze acceptability and use to gain insight into the most promising ways of disseminating interventions like Bright IDEAS using Internet, Internet II, and other emerging technologies.

Sex

All

Minimum age

18 Years

Inclusion Criteria: Subjects will be drawn from the pool of all parents who are primary caregivers of children diagnosed with any form of cancer 4-16 weeks prior to contact about the Problem Solving Skills Training intervention and cared for at one of the 4 data collection sites. No attempt will be made to stratify the sample by any particular demographic variables (e.g., age, ethnic background, or type of cancer diagnosed in their child), except that monolingual Spanish-speaking parents will be specifically recruited to provide adequate representation for statistical analysis at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and UT/MD Anderson Cancer Center. Goal: 20% total enrollment.

Exclusion Criteria: Parents of children with cancer will be excluded if (1) they do not read or speak English or Spanish; (2) their child is in severe a medical crisis, as determined by the oncologist, or (3) they live a prohibitive distance to complete the intervention (typically, \>50 miles from the Center) and do not have access to a telephone for phone intervention sessions. Internet access will be facilitated as part of the e-PSST intervention arm. These exclusionary criteria are identical to our previous work; \<10% of eligible mothers have been excluded.

• DERIVEDPhipps S, Fairclough DL, Noll RB, Devine KA, Dolgin MJ, Schepers SA, Askins MA, Schneider NM, Ingman K, Voll M, Katz ER, McLaughlin J, Sahler OJZ. In-person vs. web-based administration of a problem-solving skills intervention for parents of children with cancer: Report of a randomized noninferiority trial. EClinicalMedicine. 2020 Jun 27;24:100428. doi: 10.1016/j.eclinm.2020.100428. eCollection 2020 Jul. PMID 32637901