Healthcare utilization disparities among children with high-risk neuroblastoma treated on Children’s Oncology Group clinical trials

Shoag J, Li Y, Getz KD, Huang YS, Hall M, Naranjo A, Richardson T, Desai AV, Umaretiya PJ, Aziz-Bose R, Kelly CA, Zheng DJ, Newman H, Zahler S, Aplenc R, Bagatell R, Bona K. Healthcare utilization disparities among children with high-risk neuroblastoma treated on Children’s Oncology Group clinical trials. Pediatr Blood Cancer. 2024 Oct;71(10):e31192. doi: 10.1002/pbc.31192. Epub 2024 Jul 12. PubMed PMID: 38997807; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC11343658.

This is a retrospective study utilizing a previously assembled merged cohort of children with HRNBL on Children’s Oncology Group (COG) post-consolidation immunotherapy trials ANBL0032 and ANBL0931 at Pediatric Health Information System (PHIS) centers from 2005–2014. Race and ethnicity were categorized to reflect historically marginalized populations as Hispanic, non-Hispanic Black (NHB), non-Hispanic Other (NHO) and non-Hispanic White (NHW). Associations between race-ethnicity and intensive care unit (ICU)-level care utilization as a proxy for treatment-associated toxicity were examined with log binomial regression and summarized as risk ratio (RR) and corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI).