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Erschienen in:
26.10.2020 | Breast Cancer
Use of patient-reported controls for secular trends to study disparities in cancer-related job loss
Erschienen in: Journal of Cancer Survivorship | Ausgabe 5/2021
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Purpose
Racial/ethnic minorities experience greater job loss than whites during periods of economic downturn and after a cancer diagnosis. Therefore, race/ethnicity-matched controls are needed to distinguish the impact of illness on job loss from secular trends
Methods
Surveys were administered during and 4-month post-completion of breast cancer treatment. Patients were pre-diagnosis employed women aged 18–64, undergoing treatment for stage I–III breast cancers, who spoke English, Chinese, Korean, or Spanish. Each patient was asked to: (1) nominate peers who were surveyed in a corresponding timeframe (active controls), (2) report a friend’s work status at baseline and follow-up (passive controls). Both types of controls were healthy, employed at baseline, and shared the nominating patient’s race/ethnicity, language, and age. The primary outcome was number of evaluable patient-control pairs by type of control. A patient-control pair was evaluable if work status at follow-up was reported for both individuals.
Results
Of the 180 patients, 25% had evaluable active controls (45 patient-control pairs); 84% had evaluable passive controls (151 patient-control pairs). Although patients with controls differed from those without controls under each strategy, there was no difference in the percentage of controls who were working at follow-up (96% of active controls; 91% of passive controls). However, only 65% of patients were working at follow-up.
Conclusions
The majority of patients had evaluable passive controls. There was no significant difference in outcome between controls ascertained through either method
Implications for Cancer Survivors
Passive controls are a low-cost, higher-yield option to control for secular trends in racially/ethnically diverse samples.