Understanding and addressing care disparities in rare cancers

Any cancer diagnosis is scary and signals a long, challenging road ahead. But rare cancers, those that affect fewer than six in 100,000 individuals each year, come with their own set of challenges, as patients and doctors navigate gaps in knowledge, treatment scarcities, and more. And these challenges are compounded still further by disparities in access to care across income groups, geographies, and racial groups.

In today's podcast, sponsored by Oracle, host Jonah Comstock is joined by Otavio Clark, vice president of oncology at Cerner Enviza, an Oracle company, and Sheri McClerklin, an associate consultant in the Oncology & Specialty Therapeutics group at Cerner Enviza, to discuss the particular challenges of health inequity in the rare cancer space.

In a 45-minute roundtable discussion, they cover the different ways in which racial, socio-economic, and geographic barriers can affect diagnosis, treatment, clinical trial access, and more for patients with rare cancers. They also discuss some ways the healthcare industry can start to mitigate these problems on an individual and policy level.

Finally, they discuss the role that data can play and how Oracle is leveraging its data from the Cerner EHR to help increase understanding of where and why care disparities are occurring. You can check out the infographic mentioned on the podcast here.

You can listen to episode 99 of the pharmaphorum podcast in the player below, download the episode to your computer, or find it - and subscribe to the rest of the series - in iTunes, Spotify, acast, Stitcher, and Podbean.