The association of travel distance and other patient characteristics with breast cancer stage at diagnosis and treatment completion at a rural Rwandan cancer facility.

Background: Butaro Cancer Center of Excellence (BCCOE) was founded to serve Rwanda's rural low-income population, providing subsidized cancer diagnosis and treatment with transport stipends for the lowest-income patients. We examined whether travel distance to BCCOE was associated with advanced-stage diagnoses and treatment completion.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study using medical record data from BCCOE patients with pathologically-confirmed breast cancer from 2012-2016.

Outpatient Palliative Care and End-of-Life Care Intensity: Linking Massachusetts Cancer Registry with All-Payer Claims.

Background: Early palliative care is associated with better outcomes for patients with advanced-stage cancers. Using a novel data linkage, we assessed outpatient palliative care use before death and its association with end-of-life care intensity and variation across eight provider networks.

Methods: We linked Massachusetts Cancer Registry and the All-Payer Claims Database for individuals with commercial insurance, Medicaid or Medicare Advantage diagnosed with colorectal, lung, prostate, and breast cancers from 2010 through 2013 who died by December 31, 2014.

Racial discrimination among women seeking breast cancer care.

Discrimination can contribute to worse health outcomes, but its prevalence in breast cancer is not well studied. We aimed to understand how women with stage I-III breast cancer faced discrimination in health care and everyday settings through the Everyday Discrimination Scale, cross-sectional survey. 296 women, 178 (60%) Non-Hispanic White (NHW), 76 (26%) Non-Hispanic Black (NHB), and 42 (14%) Hispanic participated.

Use of and Steering to Pharmacies Owned by Insurers and Pharmacy Benefit Managers in Medicare.

Importance: The prevalence of pharmacies owned by integrated insurers and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), or insurer-PBMs, is of growing regulatory concern. However, little is known about the role of these pharmacies in Medicare, in which pharmacy network protections may influence market dynamics.

Objective: To evaluate the prevalence of insurer-PBM-owned pharmacies and the extent to which insurer-PBMs steer patients to pharmacies they own in Medicare.

The Ability of SOCS1 to Cross-Regulate GM-CSF Signaling is Dose Dependent.

Suppressor of cytokine signaling (SOCS) 1 is a key negative regulator of interferon (IFN), interleukin (IL)12, and IL-2 family cytokine signaling through inhibition of the Janus kinase-signal transducer and activator of transcription (JAK-STAT) pathway. To investigate the temporal induction of SOCS1 in response to cytokine in live cells and its selective regulation of signaling pathways, we generated a mouse expressing a Halo-tag-SOCS1 fusion protein (Halo-SOCS1) under control of the endogenous promoter. Homozygous Halo-SOCS1 mice () were viable with minor T cell abnormalities, most likely due to enhanced Halo-SOCS1 expression in thymocytes compared with the untagged protein.