A cancer patient’s expectations about the benefits of complementary and alternative (CAM) and their perceived access to CAM therapies are likely to guide whether or not they will use those options, according to a new study published ahead of print in the journal CANCER from researchers at Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania.  The team found that attitudes and beliefs about CAM were found to be a better predictor of CAM usage than socio-demographic factors alone – such as race, sex, or education – which are often used to describe CAM users but stop short of fully explaining what drives people to use them.

The findings may help cancer centers develop more patient-centered programs that remove barriers and better serve diverse groups as they work to better integrate the services into traditional cancer care.

CAM therapies, such as yoga and acupuncture, are becoming more common among cancer survivors looking to improve their quality of life, and have been shown to reduce pain, fatigue, and psychological distress. While clinical and socio-demographic factors (sex, race and education) are useful in describing this group, they provide limited opportunity to understand what prompts a patient to use the therapies or barriers against utilization.

In one of the first studies to explore those questions, the team, including senior author Jun Mao, MD, MSCE, an associate professor of Family Medicine and Community Health in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, who also directs the Integrative Oncology program in the ACC, and first author Joshua Bauml, MD, an assistant professor in the division of Hematology/Oncology, found that specific attitudes and beliefs, such as expectation of therapeutic benefits, patient-perceived barriers (cost, access), and opinions of patients’ physician and family members, were much more likely to affect patients’ use than clinical and demographic characteristics alone. 

The team also found that beliefs and attitudes varied by key socio-demographic factors such as sex, race, and education. Patients who were younger, female, and those who had a college education tended to expect greater benefits from CAM. Nonwhite patients reported more perceived barriers, such as transportation issues and more concern over side effects, compared with white patients, but their expectations concerning the therapies’ benefits were similar.