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Gender, race, BMI, and social support in relation to the health-related quality of life of cancer survivors: a report from the American Cancer Society’s Study of Cancer Survivors II (SCS-II)

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Abstract

Purpose

We examined the main and interactive effects of race, BMI, and social support on physical and mental health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among male and female cancer survivors using the stress and co** theory to inform findings.

Methods

HRQoL issues among 1768 cancer survivors were examined using the American Cancer Society’s cross-sectional Study of Cancer Survivors II. Two-step multiple linear regressions were conducted to assess the physical and mental HRQoL of male and female cancer survivors, respectively.

Results

The average age of participants was 67.36 (SD = 11.51); the majority were female (53.3 %; n = 941) and non-Hispanic White (85.9 %; n = 1517). The average BMI measurement for participants was 28.33 (SD = 5.90), with 41.3 % (n = 729) overweight and 30.3 % (n = 535) obese. Higher BMI was significantly associated with lower physical HRQoL across gender, while social support had significant main effects on physical and mental HRQoL across gender. Race moderated the relationship between social support and physical HRQoL among female cancer survivors and between BMI and mental HRQoL for both genders.

Conclusions

The results of this study contribute a unique gender- and racial-specific perspective to cancer survivorship research. While the buffering hypothesis of the stress and co** theory was not supported, the main effects of BMI and social support on HRQoL were different across gender and race.

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Acknowledgments

The ACS Studies of Cancer Survivors (SCS) were funded as an intramural program of research conducted by the ACS Behavioral Research Center. We wish to acknowledge the cooperation and efforts of the cancer registries and public health departments from the states of Arizona, California (Regions 2–6), Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wyoming. We also thank the staff of the hundreds of hospitals that reported cases to the participating cancer registries. Lastly, we are grateful to the thousands of cancer survivors, their physicians, and their loved ones who contributed to the collection of these data. The authors assume full responsibility for analyses and interpretation of these data. The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Kevin Stein for serving as the Primary Investigator of the Studies of Cancer Survivors, Ms. Rachel Cannady for study management and data delivery, and Dr. Regine Haardörfer for data analysis consultation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Behavioral Science and Health Education, Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ruth P. Westby & Carla J. Berg

  2. ICF International, 3 Corporate Square, Suite 370, Atlanta, GA, 30329, USA

    Ruth P. Westby

  3. Behavioral Research Center (BRC), American Cancer Society, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Corinne Leach

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  1. Ruth P. Westby
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Correspondence to Ruth P. Westby.

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Conflict of interest

Ruth Westby, MPH, Carla Berg, PhD, and Corinne Leach, MPH, MS, PhD declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Human and animal rights and informed consent

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Westby, R.P., Berg, C.J. & Leach, C. Gender, race, BMI, and social support in relation to the health-related quality of life of cancer survivors: a report from the American Cancer Society’s Study of Cancer Survivors II (SCS-II). Qual Life Res 25, 409–421 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-015-1084-6

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