Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Apr 9, 2025
Date Accepted: Sep 16, 2025
Psychosexual Educational Partners Program (PEPP): Feasibility Study of a Sexual Health Self-Management Intervention for Couples with a History of Breast and Gynecological Cancer
ABSTRACT
Background:
Women with breast or gynecologic cancer and their intimate partners often face sexual problems in their relationships. Accessing care for sexual health problems is challenging for several reasons (e.g., limited trained providers, privacy concerns), making self-management approaches highly promising.
Objective:
This study assessed the feasibility of the Psychosexual Educational Partners Program (PEPP), a 6-week sexual health self-management intervention for women treated for breast or gynecological cancer and their intimate partners.
Methods:
A mixed-methods single-arm, repeated measures design was used. An attrition rate of ≤ 25% was considered feasible. Intervention experiences were assessed via interviews and preliminary effects on Dyadic Sexual Communication (DSC), relationship quality measured by Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale (RDAS) and sexual health measured by PROMIS® Sexual Function and Satisfaction V2.0 (PROMIS SexFS) were explored quantitatively.
Results:
Seven (77%) of the nine couples completed the study through week 6 and provided both pre- and post- study data resulting in an attrition rate of 22% (2 of 9 couples), which met the feasibility benchmark for attrition of 25% or less. Two themes emerged, PEPP Helped us start difficult conversations and impacted Emotional and physical intimacy. Intervention adherence was 85%. DSC scores improved with a mean change score of 6.64 (SD = 9.65) and a Cohen’s d of .69. RDAS scores declined slightly with a mean change score of -.93 (SD = 3.41) and a Cohen’s d of .27. PROMIS SexFS scores showed small improvements for women on desire with a mean change score of 2.36 (SD =6.24) and a Cohen’s d of .38. Similarly for women, satisfaction mean change score was 2.20 (SD = 8.22) and a Cohen’s d of .27. For intimate partners a small effect was found for desire, but in this instance, desire decreased with a mean change score of -1.57 (SD = 6.) and a Cohen’s d of .26.
Conclusions:
Findings support PEPP as a feasible intervention for improving sexual communication. If proven effective in a randomized controlled trial, it has the potential to address a critical gap in supportive care for female cancer survivors. Clinical Trial: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05070299
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.