Preliminary effects on physical activity and quality of life
Pugh, cancer, sexual dysfunction
CANCER
While women significantly increased MVPA, strength training, and stretching & flexibility exercises from baseline to 3-months, most participants’ activity levels remained below the target of 150 min per week, which was based on PA guidelines to improve cancer-related health outcomes (Campbell et al., Participants also reported meaningful improvements in several QOL domains. Specifically, participants achieved clinically meaningful improvements (Yost et al., Additionally, participants reported increases in emotional support, complementing the mixed methods findings that women were accepting of intervention components targeting social support, particularly peer mentoring. Among younger cancer survivors, who often report social isolation, social support can be a facilitator of health behavior change (Pugh et al., The study sample showed high levels of sexual dysfunction at all time points, and there were no observed changes to sexual function over time. However, over one-third of participants reported no sexual activity at baseline. There are known threats to validity when using the FSFI to measure sexual function in women without recent sexual activity (Boehmer et al., 