Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Fear of cancer recurrence affects many patients, and fear of recurrence occurs across many different types of cancer diagnoses. Fear of recurrence is not only associated with psychological distress and lower quality of life, but has treatment implications as it may influence patients' beliefs about their medication, treatment, illness, and health care usage. My proposed research would like to investigate coping techniques that can reduce fear of cancer recurrence in patients, as uncovering ways to reduce fear of recurrence could lead to relevant and cost-effective clinical interventions. I will be investigating factors associated with fear of cancer recurrence at the beginning of my study, but most importantly, I will be checking in at six and nine months to see if fear of recurrence reduction is associated with any particular coping techniques and factors (or if certain factors and coping techniques increase fear of recurrence). Since fear of cancer recurrence can increase over time, it is important to study this variable at multiple time points to create research that will be most relevant in future clinical interventions. This research will be impactful not only since it has the potential to increase quality of life and reduce psychological suffering in cancer patients, but because reduced fear of recurrence may impact treatment and health care usage. Since the effects of cancer are widespread and well-known, this research has the potential to have far-reaching effects.