Improving family history collection.

Family history is important for assessing risk of cancer. This study aimed to improve cancer family history communication and collection by training and motivating lay individuals to construct pedigrees. The authors' ultimate goal is to improve identification of familial cancer.

Cancer recurrence worry, risk perception, and informational-coping styles among Appalachian cancer survivors.

Despite a growing literature on the psychosocial impact of the threat of cancer recurrence, underserved populations, such as those from the Appalachian region, have been understudied. To examine worry and perceived risk in cancer survivors, Appalachian and non-Appalachian cancer patients at an ambulatory oncology clinic in a university hospital were surveyed. Appalachians had significantly higher worry than non-Appalachians.

Living post treatment: definitions of those with history and no history of cancer.

Introduction: Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer, and the second leading cause of cancer death in women. Due to advances in medicine, the 10 year survival rate is 80%, resulting in a large and growing number of breast cancer survivors. Definitions of cancer survivorship from a number of professional organizations and researchers vary, but the research is scant on the meaning of cancer survivorship to people with and without a prior cancer history.

Exploring perceptions of genetic testing: an examination of perceived accuracy over time.

Objective: Despite the potential impact of perceptions of genetic testing, little research has examined these perceptions. The current study examined factors associated with perceived accuracy of genetic testing to detect BRCA1/2 mutations and change in perceived accuracy.

Methods: Participants were recruited through advertisements, community groups, and local oncologists and gynecologists.

Tools for assessing readability and quality of health-related Web sites.

With the Internet becoming a growing source of information on genetics, genetic counselors and other health-care providers may be called upon to guide their patients to appropriate material, which is written at a suitable reading level for the individual and contains quality information. Given that many health-related Web sites are written at a high school or higher reading level, without direction from a genetic counselor or health-care provider, many Internet users may currently be turning to health-related Web sites that they do not understand. Additionally, Internet users may not know how to evaluate the quality of information they find, which could lead to them access inaccurate or irrelevant information.

Cancer family history reporting: impact of method and psychosocial factors.

Family history is one the greatest risk factors for disease and one of the most important informational tools in medical genetics for the purpose of diagnosis, risk assessment, prevention and treatment. However, research is needed on the comparability of different methods of cancer family history assessment and the influence of psychosocial factors in family history reports. The purpose of this study was to determine if individuals had discrepancies between written and interview reports of cancer family history and the role of psychosocial factors in these discrepancies.