Improving quality of life in cancer survivors: understanding how a digital behaviour change intervention works and how to maximize its implementation in practice.

This project offers an exciting opportunity to complete a PhD in Psychology at the University of Southampton. The PhD aims to explore how a digital intervention for cancer survivors might produce its effects and to build an understanding of how to maximize implementation of digital behavior change interventions in practice.

The number of people surviving cancer is increasing, but cancer survivors are often left with poor quality of life after treatment finishes. Cancer survivors experience problems like fatigue, distress and weight gain. Many survivors are sedentary and don’t meet guideline recommendations for a healthy diet. The supervisors have developed an online intervention which aims to help cancer survivors to make simple behavioral changes that can improve their quality of life and prevent cancer recurrence.

The current PhD studentship aims to: 1) Use mixed-methods to explore the experiences of cancer survivors who have used the digital intervention to understand more about how the intervention is perceived and how it might work. 2) To explore the experiences of healthcare staff who have provide support to patients who are using the digital intervention to understand potential barriers and facilitators to implementation in practice. 3) To conduct a systematic review examining barriers to implementation of digital behavior change interventions in practice.