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).
Justin F. Gainor, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses updated findings from the ARROW study in which BLU-667, a selective RET inhibitor, demonstrated clinical activity and tolerability in patients with advanced RET fusion–positive non–small cell lung cancer (Abstract 9008).
Javier Sastre, MD, PhD, of Hospital Clinico San Carlos, discusses phase III findings on the assessment of circulating tumor cells as a prognostic factor and FOLFOXIRI plus bevacizumab combination outcomes for patients with poor-prognosis colorectal cancer (Abstract 3507).
Neeraj Agarwal, MD, of the Huntsman Cancer Institute, and Arnaud Méjean, MD, PhD, of the Hôpital Européen Georges-Pompidou, Paris Descartes University, discuss an update to the CARMENA trial with new phase III study results on the benefit of cytoreductive nephrectomy followed by sunitinib vs sunitinib alone in metastatic renal cell carcinoma (Abstract 4508).
Paul G. Richardson, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses findings from the phase III ICARIA-MM trial showing that isatuximab, pomalidomide, and low-dose dexamethasone significantly improved progression-free survival and overall response vs pomalidomide and dexamethasone (Abstract 8004).
Miriam Knoll, MD, and Zachery Reichert, MD, PhD, discuss the FORCE trial, which is examining whether radiation can create a more durable response to systemic therapy, and whether using newer, more sensitive imaging technologies can improve outcomes (Abstract TPS5096).