Grant Number:	5R21CA292256-02 Interpret this number
Primary Investigator:	Trivedi, Ranak
Organization:	Stanford University
Project Title:	Developing a Dyadic Intervention to Alleviate Stress, Loneliness, and Social Isolation Among Breast Cancer Survivors and Families.
Fiscal Year:	2026

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Breast cancer survivors and their family caregivers commonly experience elevated stress, social isolation, and loneliness that undermine self-management and long-term health. Beliefs about health and disease, stigma around cancer and reproductive organs, and family caregiving roles can amplify these psychosocial stressors and impede effective self-management. Understanding and intervening on mechanisms that drive stress, isolation, and poor self-management is therefore critical to improving survivorship outcomes broadly. However, there is limited evidence on how these mechanisms operate especially among groups with high fear of cancer, and there are few rigorously developed dyadic behavioral interventions that target both survivors and caregivers to reduce psychosocial burden and enhance self-management. The long-term goal of this research is to develop a theory-driven, culturally informed dyadic intervention that reduces stress, loneliness, and social isolation to improve self-management among breast cancer survivor-caregiver dyads. The objective of this proposal is to create a dyadic intervention for breast cancer survivors and their family caregivers by adapting web-SUCCEED (web-based Self-care Using Collaborative Coping EnhancEment in Diseases), a multicomponent behavioral program that has been developed for patients managing chronic health conditions, and their family caregivers. We will establish proof of concept of this intervention with South Asian breast cancer survivors and family caregivers living in the United States. We chose this group since the prevalence of breast cancer is rising rapidly, especially among younger women. South Asian women in the US have some of the lowest low rates of preventive screening (11%), and when they do receive screening, breast tissue may delay diagnosis. Combined with the limiting opportunities for early detection and treatment. By testing adaptation processes and feasibility in a South Asian context we will both address an important disparity and generate knowledge about mechanisms and adaptation strategies that are applicable across wide range of populations. Our Specific Aims are as follows: 1) Using generative co-design with survivors, caregivers, and community stakeholders, adapt web-SUCCEED to produce a prototype dyadic self-management intervention sensitive that furthers precision medicine by incorporating beliefs, cancer-related stigma, and caregiving norms; 2) Conduct a pilot randomized trial (n=30 dyads) to evaluate feasibility (recruitment, retention, randomization), acceptability, and preliminary measures of target mechanisms and selfmanagement outcomes. This work integrates community-engaged design with implementation-focused measures to produce a replicable adaptation framework and an intervention ready for efficacy testing. Results will elucidate mediated psychosocial mechanisms influencing self-management and provide a scalable model for adapting dyadic interventions across groups that experience cancer-related health disparities.





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