Photovoice Intervention

Driven by Jen’s dissertation findings that young adults living with advanced cancer frequently encounter disorienting grief, disconnection with their pre-cancer identities, and a longing for belonging and purpose,^1-2 we set out to create an intervention to address these concerns. We embarked on a search for psychosocial interventions tailored to YA cancer survivors. Through our review, we found a few group-based meaning-centered interventions³ that included adult participants, but none that focused on fostering meaning-making among young adult survivors in a synchronous, virtual group-based setting. Within the literature, we found the Photographs of Meaning (POM) model, a chat-based asynchronous photovoice intervention developed by Beaupin, Levy, Pailler and their colleagues,^4-6 which became the inspiration from which we designed a new young adult meaning-centered intervention. We are thankful to these researchers for allowing us to adapt their intervention to match the needs and modality for young adult survivors living across the country. Our resulting intervention became Through the Lens, an eight-week structured synchronous, virtual support group for young adults with cancer that builds upon the frameworks of photovoice and meaning-centered group psychotherapy.⁷

Photovoice is a participatory action research (PAR) framework for understanding beliefs and behaviors among communities that are often not given a voice to advocate for their needs. This method incorporates a group-based design that offers mutual aid and a sense of belonging for those who are socially stigmatized, such as those living with life-limiting illnesses.⁸ Subsequently, participants’ powerful visual images foster openings for increased insight into how they perceive their illness and its impact on their quality of life,^7,9 activating opportunities for awareness and collective action within health systems and communities.^9-10 In particular, photovoice has demonstrated an ability to increase young adults’ sense of agency to portray strengths and challenges around life-limiting illnesses through the process of publicly exhibiting their photographic narratives,^11-13 providing this often isolated population a platform for enhanced self-esteem, control, and agency.^8,14-16 Drawing on young adults’ love of narrating their experiences on social media with photographic images and brief narratives, photovoice provides an ideal framework for YA survivors to reflect on and portray salient aspects of daily life both in and outside of their cancer treatment.¹⁷

If you are interested in hosting a Through the Lens photovoice group in your community, please contact Jen at jen.currin-mcculloch@colostate.edu. You can also learn more about the intervention through our manual.

We wish to express our gratitude to the young adults with cancer who have participated in the Through the Lens groups over the years and generously shared their experiences with cancer and provided guidance on how to enhance this group intervention. Many of these young adults have shared their art for this website and traveling photo exhibit.

We thank the International Association for Social Work with Groups for endorsing our intervention and for their financial support to test the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention among young adults with cancer.⁷ We also wish to share our gratitude with Cambia Health Foundation for sponsoring Jen’s career scholar award, which enabled her to train other social workers around the country in the intervention. Cambia has also generously sponsored the National Young Adult Cancer Survivor Photo Exhibit.

To Cancer Services of Northeast Indiana and Cactus Cancer Society, we are forever grateful for your faith in us as facilitators and for sharing about the group with YA survivors receiving services at your organizations.

We thank the creators of Photographs of Meaning^4-6 for their guidance and encouragement as we adapted the Photographs of Meaning intervention, an asynchronous chat-based intervention first offered to individuals in hospice and palliative care settings. Photographs of Meaning was based on Breitbart and Poppito’s Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy,³ an evidence-based intervention for individuals living with advanced cancer. When we were creating the Through the Lens photovoice intervention, the Photographs of Meaning team graciously met with us to share about their intervention and invited us to adapt the program to a YA cancer population through a synchronous virtual format.