Abstract IA033: The impact of race, ethnicity, culture, and well-being among childhood cancer survivors and their parent caregivers

Abstract

Abstract The number of childhood cancer survivors (CCS) has increased over the past 30 years due to improvements in the treatment of cancers affecting this population; however, most CCS experience late adverse effects from their cancer treatment. In many cases, when a child is diagnosed with cancer, parents serve as primary caregivers throughout their child's cancer journey by providing them with medical, informational, and emotional support. Even when CCS become young adults, parents often remain involved with medical care and help CCS transition from pediatric to adult-focused survivorship care. Unfortunately, the proportion of young adult CCS engaged in survivorship follow-up care rapidly declines with increasing age and time since treatment. Disengagement in follow-up care results in inadequate medical surveillance for late effects and a missed opportunity for survivorship-focused care, including psychosocial screening and supportive care referral. The decline in long-term follow-up care is multifactorial and includes patient, provider, and system-related barriers to care. This session will present a brief overview of CCS and parents from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds who experience significant health disparities, including inequities in cancer treatment and access to care compared to non-Hispanic whites. This session will also highlight the work from the Center for Young Adult Cancer Survivorship Research; a dual institutional center focused on survivorship care and quality of life among multi-ethnic survivors (predominantly Hispanic). Recent research examining racial/ethnic disparities included other related factors such as socioeconomic status, language preference, nativity, and acculturation, which provided insight into how to best address these multifactorial aspects of racial/ethnic disparities in this population. Lastly, this session will review a recent report by Mobley et al., 2021 that described systematic barriers to CCS survivorship care and discussed new opportunities to address these health care barriers. Citation Format: Carol Y. Ochoa. The impact of race, ethnicity, culture, and well-being among childhood cancer survivors and their parent caregivers [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 15th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2022 Sep 16-19; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2022;31(1 Suppl):Abstract nr IA033.