Grantee Profile

Get Real and Heel

Cancer survivorship has been identified as an integral component of cancer care.  Get REAL and HEEL is a 5 month breast cancer survivorship program that provides individualized prescriptive exercise and recreational therapy to women who have completed all chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery within 6 months.  The goal of Get REAL and HEEL is to provide breast cancer survivors the opportunity to improve their quality of life through knowledge enhancement, skill-development, and motivation needed to engage in healthy behaviors.  The Get REAL and HEEL program has been a funded breast practice  initiative through Susan G. Komen, Triangle Affiliate community health grant program since 2007.  The community outreach efforts of the Get REAL and HEEL program were recently published in the American Journal of Recreation Therapy; Promoting physical and psychosocial health behavior changes in breast cancer survivors through a community-based workshop: Process and impact evaluation examined the feasibility and effectiveness of delivering community-based health education workshop to promote positive health behaviors for breast cancer survivors in a predominately rural 13-county region in NC.  Results found that short-term interventions incorporating multiple agency involvement for provision of community-based workshops and participant-directed follow-up at home may have a positive impact on health behaviors for breast cancer survivors. 

For more information contact Diane Groff or Claudio Battaglini at 919-962-0534.