Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-2024

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Public Health

Major Professor

Laurie L. Meschke

Committee Members

Kristina Kintziger, Jennifer Jabson Tree, Lisa Lindley

Abstract

Given its significant economic and quality of life benefits, palliative care should be an important part of an integrated healthcare treatment plan for the more than 130 million Americans currently living with at least one chronic disease shown to benefit from palliative care intervention. Yet, palliative care remains widely underutilized and misunderstood. Prior research has consistently established a positive association between health knowledge and health behavior adoption. However, there has been limited exploration of factors related to palliative care knowledge and misconceptions in recent literature. Using the risk perception attitude (RPA) framework, this study explored the relationship between cancer risk perception attitude and palliative care misconceptions with the purpose of identifying associated factors that may inform palliative care promotion strategies.

Complete cross-sectional data for 859 participants were drawn from the fifth wave and second cycle of the National Cancer Institute’s Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS). The independent variable was RPA group membership, and the dependent variable was palliative care misconception score. Health indicators – personal and family cancer history – served as control variables. Demographic characteristics included biological sex, race/ethnicity, education, and age. Statistical analyses consisted of bivariate linear regression and multivariable linear regression.

The primary relationship of interest was not found to be significant. Of the health indicator and demographic variables, only the association between education and palliative care misconception score was found to be significant. In the bivariate linear regression analysis, highly educated participants (i.e., college graduate or more) were more likely to report a lower palliative care misconception score ( = 6.99, ppp

While this study yielded non-significant results for its primary relationship of interest, its findings suggest further opportunity to strengthen palliative care knowledge and misconception research in pursuit of improving palliative care adoption willingness so those living with chronic diseases such as cancer can “live as well as possible for as long as possible.”

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