About This Project

Being diagnosed with breast cancer can be scary and helpless. Although doctors may have a treatment plan for you, making an informed, educated and personalized treatment decision could help you relieve anxiety, avoid unnecessary procedures or side effects, and eventually improve your satisfaction with care. Listen to the story of a 79-year-old breast cancer survivor who has beaten cancer twice. Her name is Viola Mo.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

We are collaborating with Cancer101 to develop the first culturally-appropriate and science-based Chinese decision aid. This decision aid is going to be tested in a series of clinical trails to help us understand how it can help newly-diagnosed breast cancer patients to make informed and educated treatment decisions. With the launching of this fundraising project, we will be able to develop the decision aid and use them in a clinical trial to test its effectiveness before releasing them to the public.

What is the significance of this project?

Most of the decision aids (an educational tool) available today are for English-speaking patients and do not account for cultural practices. The decision aid we are developing is the first of this kind that is tailored for Chinese-speaking population, incorporates cultural considerations (e.g. herb use, special diet), and will be tested and validated in clinical trials. This is an important step to enhance patient-centered care for Asian Americans, a growing but vulnerable and understudied population. If successful, these decision aids have the potential to become a world-wide tool for patient that can read Chinese; and an example mechanism for any ethnic group that needs a culturally-appropriate decision aid.

What are the goals of the project?

The funds will allow us to access the resources needed to develop decision aids in Chinese and to produce a few advance copies for review and testing.