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Catalyzing social support for breast cancer patients

Published: 10 April 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Social support is a critical, yet underutilized resource when undergoing cancer care. Underutilization occurs in two conditions: (a) when patients fail to seek out information, material assistance, and emotional support from family and friends or (b) when family and friends fail to meet the individualized needs and preferences of patients. Social networks are most effective when kept up to date on the patient's status, yet updating everyone takes effort that patients cannot always put in. To improve this situation, we describe the results of our participatory design activities with breast cancer patients. During this process, we uncovered the information a social network needs to stay informed as well as a host of barriers to social support that technology could help break down. Our resulting prototype, built using Facebook Connect, includes explicit features to reduce these barriers and thus, promote the healthy outcomes associated with strong social support.

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  • (2025)The Role of Friends in Supporting Young People With Cancer: A Scoping ReviewPsycho-Oncology10.1002/pon.7010734:2Online publication date: 16-Feb-2025
  • (2024)Enhancing the Fight of Breast Cancer in Namibia Through Awareness and Online Social Network SupportImpact of Digital Solutions for Improved Healthcare Delivery10.4018/979-8-3693-5237-3.ch017(445-480)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2024
  • (2024)Evaluation of quality of life and socio-emotional impact of oncological treatment among patients with breast cancerJournal of Medicine and Life10.25122/jml-2024-023817:3(341-352)Online publication date: Mar-2024
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        cover image ACM Conferences
        CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
        April 2010
        2690 pages
        ISBN:9781605589299
        DOI:10.1145/1753326
        Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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        Published: 10 April 2010

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        1. health consumers
        2. participatory design
        3. social network

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        Cited By

        View all
        • (2025)The Role of Friends in Supporting Young People With Cancer: A Scoping ReviewPsycho-Oncology10.1002/pon.7010734:2Online publication date: 16-Feb-2025
        • (2024)Enhancing the Fight of Breast Cancer in Namibia Through Awareness and Online Social Network SupportImpact of Digital Solutions for Improved Healthcare Delivery10.4018/979-8-3693-5237-3.ch017(445-480)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2024
        • (2024)Evaluation of quality of life and socio-emotional impact of oncological treatment among patients with breast cancerJournal of Medicine and Life10.25122/jml-2024-023817:3(341-352)Online publication date: Mar-2024
        • (2024)Family Resilience in Care Coordination Technologies: Designing for Families as Adaptive SystemsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869988:CSCW2(1-28)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
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        • (2024)Understanding Online Parental Help-Seeking and Help-Giving in Early Childhood: The Design Challenges of Supporting Complex Parenting QuestionsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36536908:CSCW1(1-36)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
        • (2023)It Takes Two to Avoid Pregnancy: Addressing Conflicting Perceptions of Birth Control Pill Responsibility in Romantic RelationshipsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36100737:CSCW2(1-27)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
        • (2023)Designing Remote Patient Monitoring Technologies for Post-operative Home Cancer Recovery: The Role of ReassuranceHuman-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 202310.1007/978-3-031-42280-5_38(598-619)Online publication date: 25-Aug-2023
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