Dr Rebecca Vince and her PhD student are investigating if a new home-based exercise programme can improve the quality of life of women returning to work after breast cancer. This short-term intervention aims to give women the confidence and skills to develop a healthier lifestyle.
In this section
What's the challenge?
More women are living with and beyond breast cancer than ever before. But they often experience long-lasting low mood or extreme tiredness, even after their treatment has ended. It can dramatically affect their quality of life. Leading a healthy lifestyle after breast cancer can help with this. But there are many barriers that prevent women from getting lifestyle support.
We hope our novel home-based exercise programme will provide women with the skills, knowledge, and confidence to adopt a healthier lifestyle when returning to work. Quality of life is important, embodying good physical and mental health and overall well-being and happiness. We believe our programme can address these factors and fulfils a very unmet need for women after breast cancer.
Dr Rebecca Vince
Lead Researcher
What’s the science behind this project?
With changes in retirement ages and advances in breast cancer treatments, there is a higher number of women now returning to the workforce following their treatment. And returning to work after breast cancer can be an important event in a woman’s life. A lot of our working lives are spent sitting down, and treatment for breast cancer and menopause is often associated with weight gain – which can contribute to lower body confidence when returning to work.
Physical activity has been shown to improve quality of life, reduce cancer-related fatigue, and reduce risk of breast cancer relapse. But we know that people can find starting an exercise programme, especially without support and guidance, a difficult experience.
So, we need new ways to support women to develop a lifestyle that promotes their quality of life and confidence when returning to work.
That’s why Rebecca and her team have created a new personalised 12-week home-based exercise programme. It’s designed to increase physical activity when returning to work and aims to improve quality of life and physical and mental well-being.
What difference will this project make?
This project has the potential to help women gain the confidence to exercise and increase their physical health, which could reduce risk of breast cancer recurrence and make returning to work easier. Ultimately, this project could improve women’s quality of life after breast cancer treatment.
How many people could this project help?
It’ll help the 55,000 women that are diagnosed with breast cancer every year in the UK. And could help the 400 men who are also diagnosed every year. This project has the potential to help each one of them when they return to work. And it has the potential to help thousands of other people returning to work after being diagnosed with other diseases.
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