July 27, 2020
Each summer, SURF-IoT fellows are given the opportunity to work under the personal guidance of UCI faculty mentors. During the 8-week program, mentors also take time to share their insights on the history, challenges and progress of the SURF-IoT research projects.
On Tuesday, Professor Michelle Fortier, UCI Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing and co-director, UCI Center on Stress & Health, presented an overview of Pain Buddy, a tablet-based program, designed to enhance pain management and foster improved quality of life in children undergoing cancer treatment.
More than12,000 children are diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States. In addition to symptoms associated with their disease, children undergoing chemotherapy frequently experience significant pain, which is unfortunately often undertreated, Fortier noted. “Our goal is to empower children to be able to have an impact on their pain experience at home,” she says.
As cancer care shifted from primarily hospital treatment to more outpatient care, Fortier, a pediatric psychologist who specializes in pain management in children, saw the need for better pain management tools. She and her colleagues researched the needs of young patients, their families and medical teams to help develop Pain Buddy.
Her presentation highlighted key aspects of Pain Buddy. The application includes daily pain and symptom diaries completed by children undergoing treatments, remote monitoring of patients’ symptoms, and cognitive and behavioral skills training. Interactive three-dimensional avatars guide children through the program and offer an incentive system to motivate engagement.
The application was designed to be “more game-like,” Fortier says. Children are asked if they have symptoms and can swipe balls into yes or no baskets. Remote monitoring by the treatment team is important, “because, we want this to be a very clinically-relevant intervention. It’s one thing for us to get all this data about the symptom experience of kids, but if we can’t act upon it, it’s not useful,” she says.
An eight-week, randomized efficacy trial demonstrated that pain severity was lower for children using Pain Buddy than for children who were simply monitored for pain. “The Pain Buddy group also experienced significantly fewer moderate to severe pain episodes compared to the control group,” she says.
Fortier, who was recently awarded a $3.195 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to continue her research and development, is currently preparing for a randomized controlled trial to assess the efficacy of this innovative treatment
SURF-IoT fellow and public health science major Judit Castellanos was selected to work on the Pain Buddy research project this summer. Castellanos will get hands-on experience conducting research in a clinical setting with a diverse patient population. She will also work with a PI and project coordinator to review medical charts, approach and recruit eligible families to participate in the study, administer questionnaires and organize data for analyses.
“The overall goal of this research program is to improve quality of life for children and parents during cancer treatment,” Fortier told the audience. “I’m so thankful again to have the opportunity to work with both CALIT2 and UROP to provide these opportunities for us as faculty researchers and for our students to gain important and necessary skills to move forward with their career goals,” she added.
SURF-IoT 2020 talk series is presented via ZOOM and open to the public. To view a schedule of future speaker and register for attendance, visit events.
Watch Professor Michelle Fortier’s presentation here.
– Sharon Henry
