Ranak Trivedi

Discipline: Psychologist

Funding awarded to: Stanford University/VA Palo Alto Health Care System

South Asian Family Approaches to Diseases (SAFAD): A Program to Enhance Caregiving among South Asian Women Living with Breast Cancer

The objective of my Sojourns project is to develop a culturally attuned web-based behavioral intervention that mitigates the unmet psychosocial and community resource needs of South Asian women living with breast cancer and their caregivers. The proposed project will accomplish this goal in three steps: first, to identify unmet needs and to evaluate culturally attuned resources; second, to use these insights to enhance my existing web-based self-management program to make it culturally attuned; and to evaluate its preliminary impact via a field test. Project activities will be supported by mentoring from Dr. Karl Lorenz. My leadership training experiences are tailored to develop a deep understanding of palliative care and how to build community-based palliative care programs; learning how to implement programs within a complex health care system; and, understanding and influencing organizational change. Project findings will support the care of South Asian women living with breast cancer at Stanford Women's Cancer Center, and beyond.

“My mission is to amplify the voice of informal caregivers of patients with serious illness and palliative needs, and become a national leader in fostering a culturally attuned, family-centered healthcare system that proactively supports caregivers during serious illness and bereavement. My work will not only contribute to our knowledge base but will integrate palliative care into oncology science and care, with the endorsement of both oncology and palliative medicine at Stanford. My focus on South Asian women with breast cancer and their caregivers is personally meaningful to me, and is at the core of delivering precise and attentive care to those living with a life-altering illness. Providing meticulous symptom management not only to the patient, but to the family unit, and supporting their ability to maintain their health within their community is the essence of good palliative care.”