Location, race and insurance status play a significant part in the odds of a patient being diagnosed with early-stage or late-stage cancer, according to a detailed medical records analysis of more than 94,000 patients with cancer by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. Patients who lived farther away from a facility designated a comprehensive cancer center (CCC) by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and who received only a diagnosis or only treatment at the center had higher than average odds of a late-stage diagnosis, as did non-Hispanic Black patients and patients with Medicaid or no insurance, regardless of their location, the researchers report. The work, published in JAMA Network Open , highlights that significant barriers to cancer screening and treatment remain to be addressed for people living far from a CCC and for disadvantaged populations.
Previous studies showed that patients who do not receive their first treatment at a CCC experience worse cancer outcomes. Investigators including Michael Desjardins, Ph.D.
, an assistant research professor of epidemiology and a core faculty member at the Spatial Science for Public Health Center at the Bloomberg School of Public Health; Frank Curriero, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology and director of the Spatial Science for Public Health Center; and William Nelson, M.
D., Ph.D.
, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center, initiated an exploratory study to determine.