Imagine being diagnosed with cancer. You undergo treatment, and eventually, you’re told you’re cancer-free. But life doesn’t just snap back to normal; cancer care doesn’t end when treatment does. Many survivors experience long-term physical and emotional effects, and they often have lingering questions about follow-up care and what to expect in the future. That’s why a survivorship care plan (SCP) is essential, it helps address the unique needs of cancer survivors.
SCPs provide patient education and improve coordination between oncologists and primary care providers. As promising as they sound, there is little data on the effectiveness of these programs among Hispanic/Latino patients, one of the largest and fastest-growing minority groups in the U.S. More importantly, Hispanic/Latino patients are less likely to receive recommended cancer screenings, more likely to be uninsured, and often face language barriers and a lack of culturally competent care. They’re also more likely to be diagnosed at later stages of disease.
To address this gap, Dr. Eric Chow, a professor in the Clinical Research Division, and his team designed a pilot randomized controlled trial to test the feasibility, acceptability, and efficacy of a survivorship care plan led by bilingual, survivorship-trained lay health educators for Hispanic/Latino cancer survivors. The team focused on breast, colorectal, lung, lymphoma, and prostate cancer survivors—the five most common cancers in the Hispanic/Latino community. Because survivorship care often isn't tailored to specific cancer types, studying multiple cancers better reflects real-world settings. Their results were published in the Journal of Cancer Survivorship.
Participants were recruited from Western and Central Washington. Nearly half preferred Spanish as their primary language, and more than half had low to marginal health literacy. Each participant received a personalized survivorship care plan in English or Spanish, based on responses to an initial questionnaire that collected demographic information, health literacy levels, cancer diagnosis and treatment details, healthcare utilization, follow-up care history, quality of life, self-efficacy, and common survivorship symptoms.
Afterward, participants met with a bilingual lay health educator who reviewed the plan and answered questions. Data were collected at baseline and again months later to evaluate three key outcomes: 1) survivors’ knowledge of their cancer diagnosis and treatment, 2) the proportion of survivors who reported planning for future cancer screenings, and 3) self-efficacy related to survivorship care and overall health-related quality of life.
“The main finding we had was in a pilot randomized trial, we found that provision of a relatively simple 2-3 page printed document (in English and Spanish if applicable), what we call a ‘survivorship care plan,’ appeared to enhance Hispanic/Latino cancer survivors’ knowledge of their own cancer history, likelihood of making plans for future cancer screening, and maybe improve self-efficacy towards survivorship care,” explained Chow.
“We also found that giving participants this plan document plus a brief lay health educator session to review and answer questions was highly acceptable (i.e., participants generally rated it useful), though the sessions did not appear to markedly change knowledge, screening, or self-efficacy,” he added.
“As participants represented a historically underserved cancer survivor population, provision of a printed survivorship care plan may represent a relatively low-resource, yet impactful, way to enhance care and coordination.”
Looking ahead, Chow and his team are conducting a follow-up study to compare the survivorship care plan with usual care.
“Now, we need to see how passive provision of a printed survivorship care plan compares with usual care where participants don’t typically receive anything,” Chow said. “We are assessing that now in an ongoing successor study, although we felt that it was not optimal to truly give nothing, so we are providing a brochure that NCI created and is publicly available on survivorship issues.”
Chow also highlighted the important collaborators that made this project possible: “We used information from the Cancer Surveillance System, which is Western Washington’s regional SEER cancer registry and is based at FHCC, and also bilingual and bicultural lay health educators from the NCI’s Cancer Information Service (CIS), which is also based out of Fred Hutch!” he said. “I think CIS deserves a lot of credit for being so open to working with us on this research project over the years and should be much better known at the institution than they are. They serve as the frontline group for NCI—if you go to the NCI website and try to ‘chat’ with someone or call or email, someone from CIS is usually the one responding.”
The spotlighted research was supported by the National Institute of Health grants.
Fred Hutch/University of Washington/Seattle Children's Cancer Consortium members Dr. Eric Chow contributed to this work.
Chow EJ, Blythe NA, Cushing-Haugen KL, Duggan C, Baker KS, Cole AM, Green S, Guiterrez AI, Lee E, Linden HM, Mendoza JA, Ohlsen TJD, Ortblad KF, Schwartz SM, Yung RL, Ceballos RM. Enhancing survivorship care among Hispanic/Latino cancer survivors via lay health educators: results of a pilot randomized trial. J Cancer Surviv. 2025.
Joss Landazuri is a PhD candidate at the University of Washington in the Microbiology program working at the intersection of biomedical science, public policy, and science diplomacy. As a Latina scientist, communicator, and policy advocate, she is passionate about leveraging her academic training, personal background, and cultural heritage to engage underserved communities in both science and the policymaking process.
For the Media