Studies from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the Area of Cancer Published (Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Outcomes Among Long-Term Survivors of Childhood Cancer: A Scoping Review): Cancer

Insurance Daily News

2021 NOV 12 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Investigators discuss new findings in cancer. According to news originating from Memphis, Tennessee, by NewsRx editors, the research stated, “The five-year survival rate of childhood cancer has increased substantially over the past 50 yr; however, racial/ethnic disparities in health outcomes of survival have not been systematically reviewed. This scoping review summarized health disparities between racial/ethnic minorities (specifically non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic) and non-Hispanic White childhood cancer survivors, and elucidated factors that may explain disparities in health outcomes.”

The news editors obtained a quote from the research from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital: “We used the terms ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘childhood cancer’, ‘pediatric cancer’, and ‘survivor’ to search the title and abstract for the articles published in PubMed and Scopus from inception to February 2021. After removing duplicates, 189 articles were screened, and 23 empirical articles were included in this review study. All study populations were from North America, and the mean distribution of race/ethnicity was 6.9% for non-Hispanic Black and 4.5% for Hispanic. Health outcomes were categorized as healthcare utilization, patient-reported outcomes, chronic health conditions, and survival status. We found robust evidence of racial/ethnic disparities over four domains of health outcomes. However, health disparities were explained by clinical factors (e.g., diagnosis, treatment), demographic (e.g., age, sex), individual-level socioeconomic status (SES; e.g., educational attainment, personal income, health insurance coverage), family-level SES (e.g., family income, parent educational attainment), neighborhood-level SES (e.g., geographic location), and lifestyle health risk (e.g., cardiovascular risk) in some but not all articles. We discuss the importance of collecting comprehensive social determinants of racial/ethnic disparities inclusive of individual-level, family-level, and neighborhood-level SES.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “We suggest integrating these variables into healthcare systems (e.g., electronic health records), and utilizing information technology and analytics to better understand the disparity gap for racial/ethnic minorities of childhood cancer survivors. Furthermore, we suggest national and local efforts to close the gap through improving health insurance access, education and transportation aid, racial-culture-specific social learning interventions, and diversity informed training.”

For more information on this research see: Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Outcomes Among Long-Term Survivors of Childhood Cancer: A Scoping Review. Frontiers in Public Health, 2021,9. (Frontiers in Public Health - http://journal.frontiersin.org/journal/public-health). The publisher for Frontiers in Public Health is Frontiers Media S.A.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.741334.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Tegan J. Reeves, Department of Epidemiology and Cancer Control, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, United States. Additional authors for this research include Taylor J. Mathis, Hailey E. Bauer, Melissa M. Hudson, Leslie L. Robison, Zhaoming Wang, Justin N. Baker, I-Chan Huang.