Longitudinal Results From the Nationwide Just ASK Initiative to Promote Routine Smoking Assessment in American College of Surgeons-Accredited Cancer Programs.

Purpose: Persistent smoking after cancer diagnosis causes adverse outcomes while smoking cessation can improve survival. Thus, integration of smoking assessment and cessation assistance into routine cancer care is critical. Aiming for incremental practice change that could be sustained and built upon through future quality improvement (QI) projects, the American College of Surgeons initiated Just ASK in 2022 to increase implementation of smoking assessment among its accredited Cancer Programs.

The American Cancer Society National Lung Cancer Roundtable strategic plan: Promoting guideline-concordant lung cancer staging.

Accurate staging improves lung cancer survival by increasing the chances of delivering stage-appropriate therapy. However, there is underutilization of, and variability in, the use of guideline-recommended diagnostic tests used to stage lung cancer. Consequently, the American Cancer Society National Lung Cancer Roundtable (ACS NLCRT) convened the Triage for Appropriate Treatment Task Group-a multidisciplinary expert and stakeholder panel-to identify knowledge and/or resource gaps contributing to guideline-discordant staging and make recommendations to overcome these gaps.

Clinician perspectives on delivering primary and specialty palliative care in community oncology practices.

Purpose: Clinical guidelines recommend early palliative care for patients with advanced lung cancer. In rural and underserved community oncology practices with limited resources, both primary palliative care from an oncologist and specialty palliative care are needed to address patients' palliative care needs. The aim of this study is to describe community oncology clinicians' primary palliative care practices and perspectives on integrating specialty palliative care into routine advanced lung cancer treatment in rural and underserved communities.

Developing national cancer survivorship standards to inform quality of care in the United States using a consensus approach.

Purpose: To develop United States (US) standards for survivorship care that informs (1) essential health system policy and process components and (2) evaluation of the quality of survivorship care.

Methods: The National Cancer Institute and the Department of Veterans Affairs led a review to identify indicators of quality cancer survivorship care in the domains of health system policy, process, and evaluation/assessment. A series of three virtual consensus meetings with survivorship care and research experts and advocates was conducted to rate the importance of the indicators and refine the top indicators.

Current Practices, Perceived Barriers, and Promising Implementation Strategies for Improving Quality of Smoking Cessation Support in Accredited Cancer Programs of the American College of Surgeons.

Purpose: Persistent smoking is associated with poor outcomes in cancer care. It is strongly recommended that oncology care providers provide cessation support; however, there is limited information about smoking cessation assessment and treatment patterns in routine oncology practice.

Methods: Leaders of the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer (CoC) and National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers (National Accredited Program for Breast Cancer) elected to participate in a national quality improvement initiative (Just ASK) focused on smoking assessment/treatment in cancer care.

Alterations in Cancer Treatment During the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the US.

Importance: The COVID-19 pandemic created challenges to the evaluation and treatment of cancer, and abrupt resource diversion toward patients with COVID-19 put cancer treatment on hold for many patients. Previous reports have shown substantial declines in cancer screening and diagnoses in 2020; however, the extent to which the delivery of cancer care was altered remains unclear.

Objective: To assess alterations in cancer treatment in the US during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Getting ready for prime time: Recommended adaptations of an Empathic Communication Skills training intervention to reduce lung cancer stigma for a national multi-center trial.

Building upon prior work developing and pilot testing a provider-focused Empathic Communication Skills (ECS) training intervention, this study sought feedback from key invested partners who work with individuals with lung cancer (i.e. stakeholders including scientific and clinical advisors and patient advocates) on the ECS training intervention.

Political Attitudes and Disease Threat: Regional Pathogen Stress Is Associated With Conservative Ideology Only for Older Individuals.

What environmental factors are associated with individual differences in political ideology, and do such associations change over time? We examine whether reductions in pathogen prevalence in U.S. states over the past 60 years are associated with reduced associations between parasite stress and conservatism.

A query theory account of the attraction effect.

We provide novel support for Query Theory, a reason-based decision framework, extending it to multialternative choices and applying it to the classic phenomenon known as the attraction effect. In Experiment 1 (N = 261), we generalised the two key metrics used in Query Theory from binary to multialternative choices and found that reasons supporting the target option were generated earlier and in greater quantity than those supporting the competitor, as predicted by the theory. In Experiment 2 (N = 703), we investigated the causal relationships between reasoning and choices by exogenously manipulating the order in which participants generated their reasons.

Disruption of National Cancer Database Data Models in the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Importance: Each year, the National Cancer Database (NCDB) collects and analyzes data used in reports to support research, quality measures, and Commission on Cancer program accreditation. Because data models used to generate these reports have been historically stable, year-to-year variances have been attributed to changes within the cancer program rather than data modeling. Cancer submissions in 2020 were anticipated to be significantly different from prior years because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Palliative care use and utilization determinants among patients treated for advanced stage lung cancer care in the community and academic medical setting.

Purpose: Despite clinical guidelines, palliative care is underutilized during advanced stage lung cancer treatment. To inform interventions to increase its use, patient-level barriers and facilitators (i.e.

Evaluation of a National Quality Improvement Collaborative for Improving Cancer Screening.

Importance: Cancer screening deficits during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic were found to persist into 2021. Cancer-related deaths over the next decade are projected to increase if these deficits are not addressed.

Objective: To assess whether participation in a nationwide quality improvement (QI) collaborative, Return-to-Screening, was associated with restoration of cancer screening.

Neoadjuvant Versus Adjuvant Chemotherapy for Resectable Metastatic Colon Cancer in Non-academic and Academic Programs.

Background: Overall survival advantage of chemotherapy before versus after metastasectomy of liver or lung lesion is not clear for colon cancer with synchronous liver or lung metastasis.

Materials And Methods: Adults 20 years or older with primary colon cancer and single organ metastatic disease either in the liver or lung at diagnosis were identified between 2010 and 2015 through the National Cancer Database (NCDB). Patients were categorized into 2 cohorts: pre-operative/peri-operative chemotherapy (neoadjuvant -[NAC]) or post-operative chemotherapy (adjuvant [AC]).

Evaluating information loss in the National Cancer Database from cases lost to follow-up.

Background And Objectives: Cancer registries must focus on data capture which returns value while reducing resource burden with minimal loss of data. Identifying the optimum length of follow-up data collection for patients with cancer achieves this goal.

Methods: A two-step analysis using entropy calculations to assess information gain for each follow-up year, and second-order differences to compare survival outcomes between the defined follow-up periods and lifetime follow-up.

Lung Cancer in Young Adults: A Single-Center Experience.

Objective: This single-center retrospective review examines the unique characteristics of young patients (ages 18 to 40 years) who were diagnosed as having non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) at Markey Cancer Center, the only National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center in the state of Kentucky.

Methods: This retrospective study examines adult patients with NSCLC who were between ages 18 and 40 at diagnosis. Patients diagnosed between 2012 and 2018 were included.

Designing a Framework for Remote Cancer Care Through Community Co-design: Participatory Development Study.

Background: Recent shifts to telemedicine and remote patient monitoring demonstrate the potential for new technology to transform health systems; yet, methods to design for inclusion and resilience are lacking.

Objective: The aim of this study is to design and implement a participatory framework to produce effective health care solutions through co-design with diverse stakeholders.

Methods: We developed a design framework to cocreate solutions to locally prioritized health and communication problems focused on cancer care.

Acceptance of mixed gambles is sensitive to the range of gains and losses experienced, and estimates of lambda (λ) are not a reliable measure of loss aversion: Reply to André and de Langhe (2020).

Walasek and Stewart (2015) demonstrated that loss aversion estimated from fitting accept-reject choice data from a set of 50-50 gambles can be made to disappear or even reverse by manipulating the range of gains and losses experienced in different conditions. André and de Langhe (2020) critique this conclusion because in estimating loss aversion on different choice sets, Walasek and Stewart (2015) have violated measurement invariance. They show, and we agree, that when loss aversion is estimated on the choices common to all conditions, there is no difference in prospect theory's λ parameter.

Improving cancer care locally: Study of a hospital affiliate network model.

Purpose: The University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center Affiliate Network (MCCAN) increased access to high-quality cancer care for patients treated in community hospitals across the state by leveraging the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer (CoC) standards to improve quality among its member sites. This study describes the network activities and services identified as most helpful or effective to its members, as well as the perceived value of joining MCCAN or pursing accreditation.

Methods: An independent research team conducted in-depth, semistructured interviews with 18 administrators and clinicians from 10 MCCAN hospitals in 2019.

Twenty-Five Years of Cancer Follow-Up; Is the Data Worth the Effort?

Background: Substantial resources are dedicated to long-term follow-up within cancer registries; however, the completeness of these data is poorly characterized. Our objectives were to quantify long-term cancer follow-up data completeness and the effort required to collect these data using the National Cancer Database (NCDB).

Methods: To quantify data completeness, patients diagnosed with cancer in 1989 were identified in the NCDB and loss to follow-up rates were assessed for 25 years after diagnosis.

Description of a Lung Cancer Hotspot: Disparities in Lung Cancer Histology, Incidence, and Survival in Kentucky and Appalachian Kentucky.

Introduction: Kentucky is recognized as the state with the highest lung cancer burden for more than 2 decades, but how lung cancer differs in Kentucky relative to other US populations is not fully understood.

Patients And Methods: We examined lung cancer reported to the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program by Kentucky and the other SEER regions for patients diagnosed between 2012 and 2016. Our analyses included histologic types, incidence rates, stage at diagnosis, and survival in Kentucky and Appalachian Kentucky relative to other SEER regions.