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).
Francesca Gay, MD, of GIMEMA, European Myeloma Network, discusses the results of the FORTE trial on the efficacy of carfilzomib/lenalidomide/dexamethasone with or without autologous stem cell transplantation according to risk status in newly diagnosed disease (Abstract 8002).
Alok A. Khorana, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic, and Hedy L. Kindler, MD, of The University of Chicago, discuss phase III findings on olaparib as maintenance treatment following first-line platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer and a germline BRCA mutation (Abstract LBA4).
Richard Pazdur, MD, Director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Oncology Center of Excellence and Acting Director of the Office of Hematology and Oncology Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, discusses the launch of Project Facilitate, a new pilot program to assist oncology health-care professionals in requesting access to unapproved therapies for patients with cancer.
Contact Information for Project Facilitate
Health-Care Professionals
Call: 1-240-402-0004
Patients and Their Families
Call: 301-796-3400
Jason Westin, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses findings of the Smart Start study on the chemotherapy-free combination of rituximab, lenalidomide, and ibrutinib in newly diagnosed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (Abstract 7508).
Richard L. Schilsky, MD, of ASCO, and R. Donald Harvey, PharmD, BCOP, of Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, discuss their study findings that expanding the clinical trial eligibility criteria for patients with advanced NSCLC would enable nearly twice as many people to be considered for participation (Abstract LBA108).