Dr Alma Habib: Effort Needs to Be Put Into Addressing Disparities in Leukemia, Lymphoma Care

Addressing disparities in leukemia/lymphoma care is a next step since multiple disparities have already been identified, discusses Alma Habib, MD, hematology medical oncology fellow at The Ohio State University.

Transcript

How are disparities in leukemia/lymphoma treatment being addressed in the current treatment landscape?

I think over the past few years, we've really done a good job of identifying disparities in our research. We've uncovered disparities in cancer care related to aging, gender, socioeconomic status, insurance status, and even through DNA sequencing. We've also uncovered that every individual has a different type of cancer, especially patients from minority racial groups. Their cancer may look different. Black patient cancers may look different from White patient cancers. I think we've really done a good job about uncovering these disparities and differences in cancer. For example, in acute myeloid leukemia, we know that Black patients have more mutations that are considered less favorable than White patients. This really impacts the way we treat their disease and their survival rates.

But I think the most important question to ask now that we've uncovered disparities is, what do we do about them? And what can we do as a health care team to improve outcomes for patients? The answers to these questions are largely going to be based on the patient. Every individual patient has different barriers to their treatment, to their access. I think a lot of our efforts now need to be focusing on that. How can we overcome the barriers that patients face in order for them to get the best care possible? And how can we improve access to clinical trials and these new treatments that we've developed?