Social determinants of cognitive outcomes in survivors of pediatric brain tumors treated with conformal radiation therapy.

Background: Social determinants of health including parental occupation, household income, and neighborhood environment are predictors of cognitive outcomes among healthy and ill children; however, few pediatric oncology studies have investigated this relationship. This study utilized the Economic Hardship Index (EHI) to measure neighborhood-level social and economic conditions to predict cognitive outcomes among children treated for brain tumors (BT) with conformal radiation therapy (RT).

Methods: Two hundred and forty-one children treated on a prospective, longitudinal, phase II trial of conformal photon RT (54-59.