Empowerment among breast cancer survivors using an online peer support community

Objectives: Breast cancer (BC) impacts the patients' quality of life. Peer support can provide emotional understanding and enhances access to information, social support, coping strategies, and empowerment. Comunitats is an online peer support community app for BC survivors that involves healthcare professionals. This study aims to explore how participation in Comunitats promotes empowerment, and to identify the variables related to it.

Methods: A prospective, cross-sectional approach was applied. One hundred twenty-one women diagnosed with BC were included in Comunitats. Sociodemographic and clinical variables, along with measures of emotional distress (HADS), post-traumatic growth (PTGI), and empowerment (Van Uden-Kraan's Empowerment Questionnaire), were collected through an online questionnaire completed by the participants. Additionally, data on participation in the online community were obtained directly from the app. Assessments were conducted at inclusion and again 3 months later. Correlations were used to guide linear regression analysis to identify the variables predicting greater empowerment outcomes.

Results: Empowerment assessment indicated that participants felt empowered by their involvement in Comunitats. The most commonly experienced empowerment outcomes were "being better informed" and "improved acceptance of the illness." "Exchanging information" and "finding recognition" were the most strongly experienced empowerment processes and the strongest predictors of empowerment outcomes in the regression analysis.

Conclusion: Involvement in Comunitats enhances empowerment in BC survivors. Empowering processes within the community partially predict overall empowerment outcomes.

Practical implications: Empowerment positively impacts self-care autonomy, self-efficacy, and treatment adherence, promoting healthier lifestyles and enhanced treatment outcomes. Therefore, we recommend encouraging participation in online peer support communities, as it might enhance empowerment.