Improving Health Equity and Reducing Disparities in Pediatric and Adolescent/Young Adult Oncology: In Support of Clinical Practice Guidelines
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Despite extraordinary strides in cancer therapy over the past 30 years, racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and age-related survival disparities persist. Hodgkin lymphoma offers an excellent paradigm to understand these disparities because successful approaches are well established in both the up-front and relapsed treatment settings. The following review, which accompanies the 2021 NCCN Guidelines for Pediatric Hodgkin Lymphoma, suggests that systemic inequities in cancer care disproportionately affect minority and low-income children, adolescents, and young adults, and directly contribute to observed disparities in cancer-related outcomes. It proposes that the first step toward reducing disparities is large-scale dissemination of guidelines, because equity is best achieved when treatment approaches are clear, comprehensive, and standardized across all clinical practice settings.
Submitted January 18, 2021; revision received March 30, 2021; accepted for publication April 20, 2021.
Disclosures: The authors have disclosed that they have not received any financial consideration from any person or organization to support the preparation, analysis, results, or discussion of this article.
Funding: This work is supported in part by the Lymphoma Research Foundation (J.M. Kahn) and by an NCI Training Program in Cancer-Related Population Sciences (NCI T32CA094061; M. Beauchemin).
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