Breast cancer can be an exhausting disease, from diagnosis through treatment. The physical and financial demands on a patient can be draining.
As if that were not scary enough, couple that scenario with limited sick days and a desperate need to hold onto your
Breast cancer can be an exhausting disease, from diagnosis through treatment. The physical and financial demands on a patient can be draining.
As if that were not scary enough, couple that scenario with limited sick days and a desperate need to hold onto your job. How do breast cancer patients survive issues outside of their illness?
That is the premise behind a pilot study being conducted by Jennifer Swanberg, executive director of the Institute for Workplace Innovation, and Robin Vanderpool, assistant professor in the University of Kentucky College of Public Health.
"We are trying to understand how women who have been diagnosed and who work lower-paying jobs, how they navigate," Swanberg said. "Breast cancer treatment and recovery is difficult even in the best of circumstances when one has access to personal and professional resources.
"We are interested in learning how employment circumstances may facilitate or inhibit the treatment process. For instance, how do women manage to stay employed and continue treatment and recover when they don't have access to workplace policies and practices such as paid sick or vacation leave?"
Vanderpool has studied cancer prevention and control for years at UK, and Swanberg studies workplace issues.
"We are focusing on women who work low-wage hourly jobs. They are more vulnerable. At lot of them, if they don't go to work, they don't make any money," Vanderpool said.
The researchers want to speak with 20 to 40 women, 18 to 65 years old, who were diagnosed with breast cancer for the first time in the past three years. Swanberg said she knows that men can have breast cancer too, but the pilot study had to be narrowly focused. The women must have hourly-wage jobs, working at least 30 hours a week and earning $15 an hour or less.
The women will be given a brief survey and then be interviewed by phone for about an hour. Participants will be