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).
Adam Brufsky, MD, PhD, of Magee-Womens Hospital and the Hillman Cancer Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, discusses phase III study findings on neratinib plus capecitabine vs lapatinib plus capecitabine in patients previously treated for HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer (Abstract 1002).
Mark J. Levis, MD, PhD, of The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University, discusses the effect of gilteritinib on survival in patients with FLT3-mutated relapsed/refractory AML who have common co-mutations or a high FLT3-ITD allelic ratio, and the importance of FLT3-ITD testing at diagnosis and again at relapse (Abstract 7000).
Matt D. Galsky, MD, of The Tisch Cancer Institute at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, discusses phase II study findings that show switch maintenance with pembrolizumab significantly improves progression-free survival in the metastatic setting (Abstract 4504).
Hope S. Rugo, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, and Peter Schmid, MD, PhD, of Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, discuss ongoing trials of immunotherapy for early triple-negative breast cancer; immunotherapy in other disease subtypes such as estrogen receptor–positive and HER2-positive; and checkpoint inhibition in PD-L1–negative disease.
Margaret A. Tempero, MD, discusses phase III results from the multicenter APACT trial, which showed that adjuvant nab-paclitaxel plus gemcitabine may be an option for patients who are ineligible for treatment with FOLFIRINOX (Abstract 4000).
