Daniel Zheng, MD, a pediatric oncologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Kira Bona, MD, a pediatric oncologist at Dana-Farber Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, discuss their research on financial toxicity in pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Drs. Zheng and Bona elaborate on findings from their study involving the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute ALL Consortium, which revealed that nearly one-third of families experience new household material hardship or catastrophic income loss during the first two years of treatment.
Dr. Zheng and Dr. Bona explained the motivation behind investigating these socio-economic burdens and discuss the upcoming RISE program, which will test a cash-transfer intervention designed to mitigate financial toxicity for low-income families.
“I think these data should be shocking to us as clinicians and as parents and as people who support people going through medical complexity,” Dr. Bona said. “The fact that we now have data that show that 1 in 4 children being treated for the most common childhood cancer is living in a home that is worried about for putting food on the table or having a roof over their head because of the financial burden of therapy is completely unacceptable.”
* An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified Daniel Zheng as Frank Zhang.
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