Active Living After Cancer: Implementation Within Be Well Acres Homes

The physical activity portion of the program sessions focuses on teaching cognitive and behavioral skills to increase physical activity, including goalsetting, self-monitoring, overcoming barriers to physical activity, enlisting social support, and how to handle "high risk" situations that may result in relapses to a sedentary lifestyle. The health educator teaches participants about various forms of moderate intensity activity and has them practice brief bouts of activity of various types to ensure that they are doing the activities safely and correctly. Each week participants receive a handout to provide information about the behavioral skill taught that week. The program also provides activity trackers (week 1) and resistance bands (week 5). The pedometer assists participants in self-monitoring their activity, and the resistance bands provide a form of home-based exercise that participants can do even with limited space.

The survivorship portion of the program features a guided discussion on a different topic each session. The goals of the discussion are to present information about the topic, answer participants' questions about the topic, encourage participants to share solutions and ideas relevant to the topic with each other, and provide information on community resources participants can access if they require additional help. The health educator makes a brief presentation about the topic, answers questions, and then asks a series of 2-3 open-ended questions to facilitate discussion about the topic. At the end of the session, the health educator navigates participants who need additional information or service related to the topic to resources in the community.