Evaluation of a community-based remotely delivered exercise program (2Unstoppable Strong) for women diagnosed with cancer

TL;DR

A remote exercise program for cancer patients was well-received and increased physical activity and social support, but more research is needed.

Contribution

A community-based remote exercise program for cancer patients was evaluated for satisfaction and preliminary outcomes.

Findings

Participants rated the program as satisfactory with a mean score of 4.7.

Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and perceived social support significantly increased over time.

Participants suggested improvements like more social interaction and longer program duration.

Abstract

Few remote-delivered physical activity (PA) interventions leverage a community-academic partnership, which may impact sustainability. The current study aimed to assess the satisfaction  with a community-based remote-delivered group-based PA program (2Unstoppable Strong) among women diagnosed with cancer and the preliminary impact of the intervention on exploratory outcomes (PA levels, perceived social support, exercise self-efficacy, barrier self-efficacy, and health-related quality of life).

Online questionnaires were administered at baseline (T0), post-program (T1), and follow-up (T2). Quantitative analyses included descriptive statistics and repeated measures analyses of variance. Open responses at the end of the questionnaire were used to identify areas of improvement. Content analysis was used to analyze the open response data.

Participants rated 2Unstoppable Strong as satisfactory (Mscore = 4.7, SD = 0.54; Mrange = 2.93 to 5.00). Moderate-to-vigorous physical activity significantly increased from T0 to T1 to T2 (F (2, 34) = 3.5, p < .05). From T0 to T1 to T2, both perceived social support quantity (F (2, 34) = 18.6, p < .001) and quality (F (2, 34) = 13.9, p < .001) significantly increased. All exploratory outcomes did not significantly change. Participants enjoyed interacting with the trustworthy instructors and found the videoconferencing software convenient to use. Areas for improvement included facilitating social interaction within the exercise group, increasing the intervention duration, and providing additional sessions.

Based on the promising findings, future hybrid implementation-effectiveness studies with larger and more-diverse populations are needed to examine the impact of 2Unstoppable Strong on cancer-related outcomes.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00520-025-09772-4.

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