Open AccessUse of patient-reported controls for secular trends to study disparities in cancer-related job loss
Author(s) -
Victoria S. Blinder,
Carolyn E. Eberle,
Christina Tran,
Ting Bao,
Manmeet Malik,
Gabriel Jung,
Caroline Hwang,
Lewis J. Kampel,
Sujata Patil,
Francesca Gany
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of cancer survivorship
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.524
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1932-2267
pISSN - 1932-2259
DOI - 10.1007/s11764-020-00960-1
Subject(s) - medicine , breast cancer , ethnic group , cancer , case control study , public health , physical therapy , demography , surgery , pathology , sociology , anthropology
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.