News|Articles|June 26, 2026

Health Equity & Access Weekly Roundup: June 26, 2026

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Key Takeaways

Undercoding obesity in EHRs obscures counseling, impedes referrals, and compounds coverage instability, exemplified by Pennsylvania’s Medicaid GLP-1 rollback and insurer churn limiting ROI from treatment.
SEER-based projections through 2032 show rising DLBCL and MCL incidence, with disproportionate growth in women and patients under 65, pressuring care delivery capacity and payer budgets.
Community oncology real-world data demonstrate delayed pain pharmacotherapy and lower strong-opioid use among Asian and Black patients vs White peers, with pancreatic cancer showing less divergence due to standardized pathways.
AML management now hinges on molecularly defined subtypes, supported by numerous targeted approvals; expanding trial access in rural settings requires correcting perceptions that enrollment equates to experimentation.
Integrating SDOH embeddings from extensive survey data improved risk-prediction AUC across multiple diseases and often matched or exceeded polygenic scores, with additive effects suggesting modifiable levers despite genetics.

Obesity coding gaps limit care; MCL rising in women; racial pain disparities in oncology; AML access expands; SDOH rivals genetics.

Coding, Coverage Gaps Hamper Multidisciplinary Obesity Care

Chronic undercoding of obesity in electronic health records is leaving patients unaware that their weight was addressed during clinical visits, according to clinicians and pharmacists from Temple University Health System and Penn Medicine who convened at an American Journal of Managed Care^® Population Health Roundtable in Philadelphia on June 4, 2026.

Ajaykumar Rao, MD, chief of adult endocrinology at Temple University, described a cascade of downstream failures from the coding gap. Sharon Herring, MD, MPH, professor of medicine at Temple, pointed to Pennsylvania’s January 2026 rollback of Medicaid glucagon-like peptide-1 coverage as a sharp reversal after 3 years of access growth. Daniel Rubin, MD, MSc, FACE, attributed payer reluctance to structural incentive misalignment: insurers don’t retain members long enough to realize downstream savings from treating obesity.

More Women Will Be Diagnosed With MCL Through 2032, SEER Data Suggest

Incidence of both diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is projected to rise through 2032, according to a Merck-authored study published in Cancer Treatment and Research Communications.

Drawing on the National Cancer Institute’s SEER-21 data from 2017 to 2022 and SEER-Medicare claims from 2012 to 2021, the analysis projects DLBCL incidence rising 7%—from approximately 28,800 new cases in 2023 to 30,800 by 2032—with first-line treatment-eligible patients growing from 33,120 to 35,523. MCL incidence is projected to grow by 6% overall, with a 43% increase among women, from 920 to 1318 annual cases, and a 33% increase among patients aged younger than 65, signaling demographic shifts that will challenge existing care models and payer budgeting.

Data Reveal Racial Disparities in Oncology Pain Prescribing: Ila Struti, MPH

Real-world data from community oncology settings reveal significant racial disparities in cancer pain management, according to a study presented at the 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting by Ila Sruti, MPH, outcomes researcher at Ontada.

Among patients with breast cancer, the median time to first pain medication was 65 days for White patients, 79 days for Asian patients, and 80 days for Black patients. Strong opioids were prescribed to 35% of White patients with breast cancer, 32% of Black patients, and 28% of Asian patients—a gap that persisted across cancer types, narrowing only in pancreatic cancer, where high pain burden drives more standardized prescribing pathways.

Rewriting the AML Treatment Playbook: Tina Bhatnagar, DO

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) has been reconceptualized from a single disease entity with few treatment options to a collection of molecularly distinct diagnoses supported by 10 approved drugs across 17 indications in the AML and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) space, according to Bhavana “Tina” Bhatnagar, DO, associate professor of medicine at West Virginia University Cancer Institute at Wheeling Hospital, speaking on episode 2 of the Managed Care Cast limited series Director’s Cut.

As former director of hematology and medical oncology, Bhatnagar focused on elevating care standards in a rural, underserved community and expanding clinical trial access, countering widespread misconceptions that trial participation represents experimentation rather than a pathway to emerging therapies.

Social Factors May Match, Outpace Genetic Risk in Disease Prediction

Social, behavioral, and environmental factors can contribute as much as—or more than—polygenic risk scores to predicting common disease, according to a study from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai published in The American Journal of Human Genetics.

Investigators analyzed data from 413,457 All of Us Research Program participants, finding that adding social determinants of health (SDOH) embeddings—derived from more than 100 survey variables—improved disease risk model discrimination by 0.007 to 0.027 in the area under the curve across 6 conditions. For asthma, chronic kidney disease, congenital heart disease, and hypercholesterolemia, SDOH contributed as much as or more than polygenic scores, and the 2 risk types appeared largely additive, suggesting social interventions can reduce disease risk regardless of a patient’s genetic background.