ASO Author Reflections: Association of Race/Ethnicity, Persistent Poverty, and Opioid Access Among Patients with Gastrointestinal Cancer Near the End of Life

Opioids are often used to mitigate pain related to cancer, especially for patients with advanced stages of disease.¹ The widespread opioid misuse and abuse crisis in the United States has led to the implementation of various regulatory strategies aimed at curbing opioid prescriptions and minimizing associated risks.² These policies have resulted in unintentional disparities in opioid accessibility particularly among various racial/ethnic patient populations.³ In addition, community-level social determinants such as long-standing intergenerational poverty have been linked to inequities in health care access and utilization.⁴ To date, the interplay between race/ethnicity and area-level persistence of poverty relative to opioid access and utilization remains poorly understood. Hence, the current study examined the association between race/ethnicity, poverty duration, and opioid use among patients with advanced gastrointestinal cancer near the end of life using a nationally representative cohort.⁵ …