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).
Josep Tabernero, MD, PhD, of the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, discusses phase III findings of the KEYNOTE-062 study showing that, for some patients with advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer, pembrolizumab may improve survival and may be an effective alternative to chemotherapy, with fewer side effects (Abstract LBA4007).
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).
Leonard J. Appleman, MD, PhD, of UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, discusses phase III trial findings that showed a trend toward worse survival with pazopanib in patients with metastatic kidney cancer who exhibited no evidence of disease following metastasectomy (Abstract 4502).
Brian C. Baumann, MD, of Washington University School of Medicine, discusses study findings that showed, for adults with locally advanced cancer across five different disease sites, proton chemoradiotherapy was associated with significantly reduced acute adverse events, with no difference in disease-free or overall survival (Abstract 6521).
Jame Abraham, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic, provides commentary on the NALA study findings on neratinib plus capecitabine vs lapatinib plus capecitabine in patients previously treated with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer (Abstract 1002).
