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).
Yoland C. Antill, MD, of Cabrini Health, discusses phase II data on the effect of durvalumab, a PD-L1 inhibitor, as a single agent in the setting of recurrent or advanced endometrial cancer. Her research compares the response in mismatch repair–deficient and –proficient tumors (Abstract 5501).
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).
Thomas J. George, MD, of NRG Oncology and The University of Florida Health Cancer Center, discusses the initial phase II results from a clinical trial using total neoadjuvant therapy (including veliparib and chemoradiation treatment) for locally advanced rectal cancer (Abstract 3505).
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).
Danny Rischin, MD, of Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, discusses phase III results that support pembrolizumab with and without platinum-based chemotherapy plus fluorouracil as new first-line standards of care for recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (Abstract 6000).
