Amy J. Davidoff, PhD, on Racial Disparities in Time to Cancer Treatment: The Effect of Medicaid Expansion
2019 ASCO Annual Meeting
Amy J. Davidoff, PhD, of Yale University School of Public Health, discusses study findings on how expanding access to Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) reduced racial disparities among patients with advanced cancer. Before the ACA was implemented in 2014, black patients with cancer were less likely than white patients to receive timely treatment, but in states that did not adopt Medicaid expansion, racial disparities persist (Abstract LBA1).
Manmeet S. Ahluwalia, MD, of the Taussig Center Institute, Cleveland Clinic, discusses phase II findings on the efficacy and immunogenicity of SurVaxM, a novel cancer vaccine targeting the tumor-specific antigen survivin in newly diagnosed glioblastoma (Abstract 2016).
William D. Tap, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses negative study findings on doxorubicin plus olaratumab vs doxorubicin plus placebo, which showed no difference in overall survival between the two treatments in patients with advanced soft-tissue sarcomas. The manufacturer is currently withdrawing olaratumab from the global market (Abstract LBA3).
Toni K. Choueiri, MD, and Ziad Bakouny, MD, both of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discuss a retrospective review of genomically profiled patients with sarcomatoid/rhabdoid renal cell cancer who were found to have better outcomes with immune checkpoint inhibitors and to harbor mutations associated with poor prognosis (Abstract 4514).
Brian C. Baumann, MD, of Washington University School of Medicine, discusses study findings suggesting postoperative radiotherapy may be an option for patients with locally advanced bladder cancer after radical cystectomy who are unable or unwilling to use adjuvant chemotherapy (Abstract 4507).
Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, of Yale School of Medicine, discusses study results on enfortumab vedotin monotherapy for locally advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer previously treated with platinum and immune checkpoint inhibitors (Abstract LBA4505).
