Understanding Expectancies in Cancer Symptom Management (R01 Clinical Trial Required)

This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) supports research on expectancy-generating factors and measures of their effects on expectancies and subsequent cancer symptom management outcomes; and research to identify moderators of such expectancy effects. Specifically, this NOFO will solicit mechanistic research that aims to understand how and why expectancy effects occur in a cancer context, elucidate their role in cancer symptom management, and identify patients, symptoms, cancer sites, and contexts in which expectancy effects can be leveraged to improve cancer outcomes. Expectancies are defined in this context as beliefs about future outcomes, including ones response to cancer or cancer treatment. Expectancies can be evoked by social, psychological, environmental, and systemic factors. Expectancy effects are the cognitive, behavioral, and biological outcomes caused by expectancies. Expectancy effects can be generated by expectancies held by patients, clinicians, family members, caregivers, and/or dyadic/social networks. This R01 grant mechanism supports mechanistic clinical trials required to investigate expectancy effects in cancer symptom management.