LEND Director Awarded $1.5M NIH Grant
Probelm Solving Skills Training for Clinicians Providing Psychosocial Care in Pediatric Oncology
LEND Director, Dr. Robert Noll has been awarded a $1.5 million NIH grant to co-lead a dissemination project with Dr. OJZ Sahler (University of Rochester). The support from the National Cancer Institute will allow Drs. Noll and Sahler to train psychosocial professionals who provide family centered care at pediatric oncology centers in the US and Canada. This work aims to teach social workers, advanced practice nurses, and psychologists how to delivery Bright IDEAS Problem-Solving Skills Training (PSST) to caregivers of children recently diagnosed with cancer.
ABSTRACT: The emotional adjustment of children has been linked to parental, especially maternal, reports of their own mental/physical health; health beliefs; coping styles; and perceptions of family and community social support. When mothers learn their child has cancer, they are distressed. This led us to hypothesize that a systematic method for teaching mothers of children with cancer ways to identify and solve problems to increase coping skills would reduce their distress and increase their levels of self-satisfaction and well-being. Bright IDEAS PSST has now been tested in > 830 mothers of recently diagnosed childhood cancer patients and found to be highly effective in reducing their levels of distress. It is also one of a very few programs pediatric oncology to have been designated a Research-tested Therapy and Intervention Program (RTIP) by the NCI and given a Dissemination Capability score of 5.0/5.0. The current grant is designed to build capacity by training 200 professionals in partnership with the Children’s Oncology Group (COG), the Association of Pediatric Oncology Social Workers (APOSW), the Association of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Nurses (APHON), and the Society of Pediatric Psychologists (SPP) special interest group in hematology/oncology how to provide Bright IDEAS PSST to mothers, fathers, and other primary caregivers at child cancer centers throughout the US. Access to professionals at every site who are trained to provide Bright IDEAS PSST will make this evidence based practice far more available to support families.