Barriers and facilitators of family rules and routines during pediatric cancer treatment.

OBJECTIVE: Pediatric nurses work closely with families of children with new cancer diagnoses and can provide essential supports to promote coping and adjustment. This cross-sectional qualitative study aimed to gather caregiver perspectives on barriers and facilitators to adaptive family functioning during the early phases of cancer treatment, with a focus on family rules and routines. METHODS: Caregivers (N = 44) of a child diagnosed with cancer and receiving active treatment completed a semi-structured interview about their engagement in family rules and routines. Time since diagnosis was abstracted from the medical record. A multi-pass inductive coding strategy was utilized to extract themes identifying caregiver-reported facilitators and barriers to maintaining consistent family rules and routines during the first year of pediatric treatment. RESULTS: Caregivers identified three primary contexts that presented barriers and facilitators to engagement in family rules and routines: the hospital setting (n = 40), the family system (n = 36), and the broader social and community setting (n = 26). Caregivers reported barriers primarily related to the demands of their child's treatment, additional caregiving needs, and needing to prioritize basic daily tasks (e.g., food, rest, household needs). Caregivers reported that different networks of support across contexts facilitated family rules and routines by expanding caregiver capacity in distinctive ways. CONCLUSIONS: Findings provided insight into the importance of having multiple networks of support to extend caregiving capacity in the context of cancer treatment demands. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Providing nurses with training to facilitate problem-solving skills in the context of competing demands may provide a new avenue of clinical intervention at the bedside.

Family rules, routines, and caregiver distress during the first year of pediatric cancer treatment.

OBJECTIVE: A new diagnosis of pediatric cancer may disrupt family functioning. The current study aimed to describe changes in family rules and routines during the first year of pediatric cancer treatment, and to explore associations with demographics, illness factors, and caregiver distress. METHODS: This exploratory mixed-methods, cross-sectional study examined 44 primary caregivers of youth in treatment for a new cancer diagnosis in 2019 and 2020, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Caregivers completed validated questionnaires assessing demographic and child illness characteristics, psychosocial distress, and cancer-related stressors, and participated in a semi-structured interview about family rules and routines. RESULTS: Caregivers reported changes in bedtime, mealtime, and school routines, relaxed behavioral expectations and rules around screen time, and new rules and routines around treatment, medications, and infection control. Caregivers with elevated levels of psychosocial distress reported more changed routines than caregivers with low levels of psychosocial distress. Caregivers who endorsed more cancer-related stressors reported more new rules and routines than those who reported fewer cancer-related stressors. Demographic and illness factors were not significantly associated with the number of changed, new, or stable family rules and routines. CONCLUSIONS: Families may relax rules and routines during the first several months of diagnosis, and this may be related to side effects of treatment and limited caregiver capacity. The long-term impact of changes in family rules and routines during cancer treatment warrants further study given that accommodating parenting strategies have been associated with adverse short- and long-term child health and behavior outcomes.

More Than a Headache: Lived Experience of Migraine in Youth.

BACKGROUND: Migraine is the leading cause of disability among adolescents and young adults. We aimed to characterize the impact of migraine on the experience of children, adolescents, and caregivers. METHODS: This descriptive qualitative study recruited youth aged four to 18 years with migraine and their caregivers from the multicenter, prospective Pediatric Migraine Registry between 2020 and 2021. Participants completed semistructured interviews targeting the lived experience of migraine. A conventional content analysis approach was used to analyze data. RESULTS: Thirty enrolled dyads (n = 30 children and adolescents, n = 29 caregivers) completed 59 interviews (n = 29 child and adolescent interviews, n = 30 caregiver interviews). Children and adolescents had a median age of 15 years and experienced a median of 13.5 headache days per month. Caregivers had a median age of 44 years and predominantly identified as mothers (n = 28). We identified three themes: (1) Impact on emotional well-being: participants described how their migraine experience included feelings of isolation, depression, and irritability alongside the need for social support; (2) Impact on daily life: participants described how symptoms and unpredictability impacted their ability to perform activities of daily living; and (3) Impact on school: participants described how migraine impacted their school experience, including threatened attendance and worsened performance. CONCLUSIONS: In this cohort of youth and their caregivers, we identified salient themes to characterize the experience of migraine. Our findings underscore the urgent need for effective migraine treatments and interventions targeting co-occurring mental health conditions, peer relationships, and school support.

General and sport-specific weight pressures as risk factors for body dissatisfaction and disordered eating among female collegiate athletes.

Female collegiate athletes are a high-risk group for disordered eating. Petrie and Greenleaf's (2007) sociocultural model proposes that both general and sport-related weight pressures lead athletes to internalize unrealistic body ideals, ultimately resulting in body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. In this study, we used structural equation modeling to assess general and sport-specific weight pressures in relation to thin- and muscular-ideal internalization, body dissatisfaction, and disordered eating among 212 female Division I college athletes. General weight pressures from parents, peers, and the media were associated with disordered eating indirectly via thin- and muscular-ideal internalization. In contrast, sport-specific weight pressures were not associated with disordered eating in the full model. After controlling for weight pressures and body ideal internalization, body dissatisfaction was also not associated with disordered eating. These findings suggest that female athletes are vulnerable to weight- and appearance-related pressures from outside the sport context and that the mechanisms underlying the development of disordered eating may differ between athletes and non-athletes.

Weight Management Outcomes of Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder Seeking Treatment from a Multidisciplinary Team.

Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are at an increased risk for developing obesity when compared to their typically developing peers. Given higher prevalence of obesity in youth with ASD, understanding factors relating to success in obesity treatment provides insight into implementing efficacious treatments for youth. The current study examines age, sleep, and metabolic factors potentially affecting success in 74 youth (Mage = 11.66) attending a multidisciplinary weight management treatment program over a year. Multilevel modeling indicated that higher baseline BMI class category, medications at baseline, and absence of sleep difficulties predicted greater reduction in BMI after a year of treatment.

Disparities in Healthcare Providers' Recommendation of HPV Vaccination for U.S. Adolescents: A Systematic Review.

Infrequent provider recommendations continue to be a key barrier to human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, including among adolescents at higher risk for future HPV cancers. To inform future interventions, we sought to characterize disparities in health care providers' HPV vaccine recommendation for U.S. adolescents. We systematically reviewed studies published in 2012-2019 that assessed provider HPV vaccine recommendations for adolescents aged 9-17. Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, we identified 52 eligible studies and used a standardized abstraction form to assess recommendation prevalence by adolescent demographic characteristics. Studies consistently found that fewer parents of boys than girls reported receiving HPV vaccine recommendations (14 studies, range of difference: -11 to -35 percentage points). Studies also found fewer recommendations for adolescents who were younger (2 studies, -3% to -12% points), non-White (3 studies, -5% to -7% points, females only), lower income (3 studies, -1% to -8% points), or uninsured (1 study, -21% points, males only). Studies identified geographic disparities in southern and rural areas. In conclusion, findings from this systematic review identify disparities in HPV vaccine recommendation that may contribute to suboptimal vaccine uptake. Efforts to improve providers' HPV vaccine communication should focus on increasing recommendation consistency, especially for lower-income, non-White, and rural adolescents.