The purpose of this study is to learn more about the challenges with breast cancer diagnosis in Tanzania and the support available to improve this process.
Breast cancer survivor, patient advocate or key healthcare personnel
>12 months of employment at the affiliated institution
Administrative or clinical involvement in the delivery of breast cancer care services.
Age 18 years and above
Key stakeholder not residing at their particular institutions during data collection will be excluded.
Age 18 years and above
Permanent residents or citizens of Tanzania
Received breast cancer diagnosis
Aim 1: We will use purposeful sampling to select the study participants of 70 participants. The representative participants from the following groups will be identified: hospital and laboratory leadership, pathologists, laboratory scientists and technicians, oncologists, surgeons, nurses, and patient survivors/patient advocates. With the exception of patient survivors and patient advocates, each focus group discussion will have only 1-2 representatives from a particular stakeholder group. Stakeholders will be adults, must have already completed their clinical or laboratory training, and have at least one year of clinical experience in breast cancer care. Patient survivors and patient advocates will be interviewed separately, and must be adults and with a prior diagnosis of breast cancer. Aim 2: Participants that were recruited in Aim 1 will be offered the opportunity to participate in follow up interviews to brainstorm implementation strategies.
Cohort
Prospective
Focus group
BehavioralA semi-structured focus group discussion guide will be developed with question probes that cover 1) contextual factors, 2) barriers to implementation, and 3) facilitators to implementation, with secondary probing questions.
Organizational Readiness for Implementing Change
Behavioralmeasures the extent to which organizational members are prepared to implement organizational change. The ORIC tool asks participants to rate their level of agreement with 12 statements pertaining to organizational readiness for change (change commitment and change efficacy) on a 5-point Likert Scale.
Identify barriers for breast cancer diagnosis in Tanzania.
Depending on results of this initial evaluation, either additional data will be collected, or if successful, will use the data to begin identifying context-specific implementation strategies using the 'Implementation Mapping' framework1 . In a future protocol, these data will then be used to develop a strategy for an intervention that addresses urgent evidence-to-practice gaps in breast cancer diagnosis in Tanzania, and has the potential to help patients with breast cancer in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in the future. The collection of this key information will assist us and our collaborators to generate background data that can be used to develop and/or complement future clinical trials.
Click on the lead sponsor to view all of their trials.
