Yale School of Medicine Chief of Breast Surgical Oncology, Dr. Rachel Greenup is the recipient of a five-year National Cancer Institute R01 award for the proposal entitled, “Effectiveness and implementation of a decision support tool to improve surgical decision making in young women with breast cancer.” In the awarded grant, Dr. Greenup and Co-PI Shoshana Rosenberg, Assistant Professor of Population Health Sciences at Weill Cornell Medical College, bring together findings from their individual career development awards.
The decision tool, CONSYDER, is a web-based app which aims to help young women with breast cancer make informed surgical decisions, while acknowledging their unique psychosocial needs and personal preferences. “Life-stage specific factors such as breastfeeding and body image can exacerbate anxiety in young women with breast cancer, making surgical choices especially challenging at an already difficult time.”
“Many young women are choosing to undergo contralateral prophylactic mastectomies (CPM), despite strong evidence that breast conservation remains equally effective,” said Dr. Greenup.
“Our goal with CONSYDER is to support young women in making high quality decisions by relaying the pros and cons of surgical options in a way that is sensitive to women’s unique concerns.”
Eight hundred breast cancer patients seeking surgical treatment at Yale Smilow Cancer Center, Weill Cornell Medicine, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Duke Cancer Institute will be recruited and utilize the CONSYDER tool as part of the study intervention. Participants will be surveyed and interviewed as part of the proposed study, which aims to prove CONSYDER’s effectiveness, and pave the way for broader dissemination of the web-based tool, nationally. Notably, surgical choice and rates of CPM will be secondary exploratory outcomes, to determine the impact on health care use over time.
Dr. Greenup is an Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery. Her research focuses on aligning patient-centered care with high-quality, lower cost treatment. This is her first R01.