Using Large Databases to Identify the Impact of Social Vulnerabilities of Health on Pediatric Cancer Care

Across all medical disciplines, studies have shown 80-90% of health outcomes attributed to the inequalities present in varied social conditions of socioeconomic status, race-ethnicity, urban-rurality, and others. Within the field of adult cancer care, there is substantial evidence on the effect of such inequalities on the national and global scales. However, there is disproportionately fewer investigative efforts within childhood cancer, despite the universal impact of social disparities across all ages. Furthermore, as childhood cancer presently ranks as the most-prevalent cause of disease-related death in high-income countries, there is a pressing need to bridge this knowledge gap.

Social vulnerability refers to the potential negative effects on communities caused by external stressors on health, such as natural or human-caused disasters and disease outbreaks. Current research is limited on the impact of social vulnerabilities and their attributed disparities on pediatric cancers, especially among pediatric head and neck cancers such as thyroid carcinoma, sarcomas, melanomas, and others.

Through leveraging contemporary, large datasets measuring diverse social vulnerabilities, our group has spent the past few years delineating which social disparities contribute the biggest impact on the care of pediatric head and neck cancer patients. In turn, we have developed comprehensive methodologies to contextualize the effect of social vulnerabilities and have laid the foundations to begin addressing these issues in the complex, modern-day environment of interrelated social factors.

This panel will focus on how to maximize the information obtained from databases and how to best utilize them for identifying, quantifying, and interpreting the specific vulnerabilities faced by these patients. Moreover, we will demonstrate how the findings derived from these databases and our research can be used to develop initiatives tackling the issues facing these patient populations and others in the public health sphere. The panelists will also highlight how these data-driven implementations may have shortcomings and how to use appropriate judgement on which information can be truly helpful.