Receipt of Preventive Care and Health Promotion Counseling in Early Stage Breast Cancer Survivors

We sought to determine the extent of receipt of preventive care and health promotion in a modern cohort of early-stage breast cancer survivors within a single breast program.

We enrolled patients with stage I-II ER + or PR+, HER2/neu-breast cancer diagnosed within the past 5 years from a single program (January-March 2020). Receipt of preventive care was assessed via electronic health record abstraction. Perceived receipt of health promotion counseling was evaluated via survey.

Our final cohort (n = 94) was mostly White females (95%) with stage I disease (73%) who were a mean of 2.5 years from diagnosis (SD = 1.3). Of 58 survivors with a primary care provider within the participating health system, the majority received preventive care services such as colorectal cancer screening (76%), pneumococcal (92%) and flu (76%) vaccinations, and mammograms (100%). Many survivors in the overall cohort did not perceive recent discussions with their healthcare providers about specific health promotion topics such as: "How much or what kind of exercise you get" (41%) and "How much or what kinds of food you eat" (18%).

In this cohort of early-stage breast cancer survivors, documented receipt of preventive care was high (>75%). However, survivors perceived limited discussions with providers about specific health promotion topics. Our findings support the need to measure, standardize, and incentivize health promotion for breast cancer survivors to improve survivor longevity and quality of life.