Expanding Medicaid may improve outcomes for children with cancer, according to a new analysis from the Brown School of St. Louis and the University of Washington School of Medicine.
Researchers found that since 2014, states that expanded access to Medicaid had a 1.5% increase in overall childhood cancer survival compared to states that did not.
“1.5% may not seem like much, but we often think of it in terms of the number of individual lives saved as a result of a programme. Kimberly Johnson, associate professor at the Brown School and co-lead author of the paper. title”Medicaid expansion and association with overall childhood cancer survivalThis article was published on February 14 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
“Although the relative increase was modest, it meant 200 more children were alive two years after being diagnosed with cancer,” the authors wrote.
Johnson and her co-authors, including lead author Justin Barnes, M.D., resident in the Department of Radiation Oncology, School of Medicine, were diagnosed with cancer in 40 states from 2011 to 2018. We analyzed data from children up to . of the National Program in the Cancer Registry of the US Centers for Disease Control.
A total of 46,850 children were included. For all cancers combined, states with and without Medicaid expansion saw a statistically significant increase in her 2-year survival rate of 1.5%.
“I am a strong believer that all children and adolescents should have access to affordable health care, and our analysis shows that expanding Medicaid will help children with cancer.” Childhood cancer is a tragic and unexpected diagnosis for families, and each child saved through consistent access to quality health care matters, saving hundreds of families from breaking hearts. I can.