Enhancing Connections
A program to help the mother with breast cancer support her child

Helping Her Heal
A program for spouses of women with breast cancer

Family Functioning Research Team

The Family Functioning Research Program involves interventions that assist family members to add to their ways of managing the impact of serious medical illness on family members including children. The overall goal is to enhance functioning and decrease distress.

As part of our commitment to assisting families and patients with cancer, we are involved in the following activities:

• Develop and evaluate educational materials about cancer and how to help manage its impact on the family (e.g., materials for parents to use in talking with their child about breast cancer in the mother).
  
  
• Train other health care professionals on how to assist patients and family members impacted by cancer.
  
  
• Test new, innovative strategies to reduce the stress and to enhance quality of life while living with cancer.
  
  
• Conduct interview studies of family members and patients that help health care professionals better know what it is like, on a day-to-day basis, to live with the challenges and opportunities for growth and well being when a family is affected by cancer.
  
  
• Design and evaluate new, innovative ways to enhance the quality of life of persons affected by cancer.
  
  
• Develop and evaluate new research for measuring and describing family members' personal experiences in experiencing and dealing with cancer in a family member.
  
  

For more information about these programs, please call Mary Ellen Shands, RN, MN at 206 685-0837 or email ffrp@u.washington.edu.

UW School of Nursing