The purpose of this research was to evaluate the collaborative design of an online community for cancer survivorship in middle Tennessee. The four primary aims of this qualitative study were to define the local cancer survivorship community, identify its strengths and opportunities to improve, build an online community to address these opportunities, and evaluate the collaborative design and development of this online community. A total of 43 cancer survivors, family members, health-care professionals, and community professionals participated in key informant interviews, sense of community surveys, and the collaborative design of the online community over a one-year period. The results of this study include a formal definition of the local cancer survivorship community and illustrate how support for cancer survivors extends throughout the local community. Six opportunities were identified to improve the sense of community in the local cancer survivorship community, and an online community was successfully developed to address these opportunities. The evaluation of the collaborative process resulted in a seven element framework for the discovery and development of community partnerships for informatics design. These results demonstrate the potential for an informatics-based approach to bring local communities together to improve supportive care for cancer survivors. Implications of the findings call for a new initiative for cancer survivorship that uses emerging web-based technologies to improve collaborative cancer care and quality of life in local communities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-03262009-143532 |
| Date | 14 April 2009 |
| Creators | Weiss, Jacob Berner |
| Contributors | Nancy Lorenzi, Dario Giuse, Kevin Johnson, Barbara Murphy, Deborah Rowe |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu//available/etd-03262009-143532/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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