Social-ecological predictors of school functioning in Hispanic children treated for cancer with central nervous system-directed therapies.

Background: Children with brain tumor or acute leukemia are at risk for neurotoxic side effects associated with their cancer therapies. These long-term deficits include poor health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in school and lower educational achievement. Although social-ecological factors may impact these outcomes, it is not known which factors play a role. Our objective was to evaluate the factors affecting school HRQOL in Hispanic childhood cancer survivors, an important at-risk group.

Procedure: Multivariable regression analyses examined whether selected social-ecological factors contribute toward suboptimal school HRQOL in 73 Hispanic children treated with central nervous system (CNS)-directed cancer therapies after accounting for effects associated with established cancer-related risk factors.

Results: Consistent with expectations from prior research, in our multivariate analysis, the cancer-related factors of having a brain tumor diagnosis and being younger at cancer diagnosis were significant predictors of reduced parent-reported school HRQOL (F(2,65) = 5.46, P < .01) and accounted for 14% of the variance. Adding the social-ecological variables of parent education, child motivation, and parental knowledge accounted for an additional 25% of the variance in school HRQOL, where higher levels were associated with better child school HRQOL. Parenting knowledge was a contributor even after controlling for effects associated with the other variables in the model (F(1,62) = 4.88, P < .05).

Conclusions: Cancer survivorship care should incorporate parent education interventions to enhance the child's school functioning, particularly for Hispanic childhood cancer survivors from predominantly Spanish-speaking families. Future research should consider other at-risk groups and incorporate social-ecological indicators to predict HRQOL outcomes.