Abstract CN11-02: Cultural considerations in outcomes among prostate cancer patients

CN11-02

Increasingly, cultural beliefs and values are being recognized as important to outcomes following cancer diagnosis. Although the way in which cultural beliefs and values are evaluated has implications for support programs that are developed to enhance survivorship, it is not known if cultural factors are best conceptualized as moderators or mediators of racial differences in psychological behaviors following prostate cancer diagnosis. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine if religiosity acted as a moderator or mediator of racial differences in coping efforts following prostate cancer diagnosis. Subjects were 224 African American and white men who were newly diagnosed with prostate cancer. Coping efforts and cultural factors were evaluated during a structured telephone interview. Overall, there were racial differences in religiosity (p=0.0001) and utilization of religious and spiritual coping (p=0.0001). African American men reported significantly greater levels of religiosity compared to white men and were most likely to use religion and spirituality to cope with their diagnosis. In the moderator analysis, the interaction between race and religiosity was not significant (p=0.22). However, in the mediation analysis, the effect for race became non-significant (p=0.36) when religiosity was entered into the model. Religiosity had a significant effect on religious and coping efforts (p=0.0001) in the final model; men with greater religiosity were most likely to use these strategies to cope with their diagnosis. These findings suggest that religiosity is not likely to be important to coping efforts only among African American men; rather, these beliefs and values are likely to influence how both African American and white men cope with their prostate cancer diagnosis.

Citation Information: Cancer Prev Res 2008;1(7 Suppl):CN11-02.