Consortium Created to Focus on Health Equity in Pediatric Oncology

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston is leading a new pediatric hematology-oncology health equity research consortium made up of pediatric oncology experts from 12 U.S. institutions.

This initiative aims to eradicate inequities for children, adolescents, and young adults diagnosed with cancer or blood disorders via the rapid development and evaluation of policy-relevant, evidence-based and community-informed health equity interventions.  

The IGNITE Consortium says it was born out of the urgent need for a research infrastructure dedicated to eradicating disparities in pediatric cancer outcomes.

In addition to Dana-Farber, the other consortium members are: Dissemination & Implementation Science Center, UC San Diego; Columbia University Irving Medical Center; Cancer and Blood Disease Institute, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles;  Seattle Children’s Hospital; University of Alabama at Birmingham; Cincinnati Children’s Hospital; Children’s Hospital Colorado; Yale School of Medicine; Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals; University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. 

While clinical trials have historically focused on improving survival rates through drug efficacy, IGNITE’s focus will be on scaling and testing health equity interventions that target the social drivers of health.

Recent data have highlighted an alarming reality: children from low-income households are more likely to experience cancer relapse and face lower survival rates compared to their more privileged peers, despite receiving treatment on highly standardized clinical trials at top academic centers. 

These inequities, rooted in social drivers of health such as food insecurity, housing instability, and lack of transportation, disproportionately affect families in poverty and those from historically marginalized racial and ethnic communities, and contribute to significant disparities in cancer outcomes.

“We now know that one in three children diagnosed with cancer lives in a low-income household, and one in three families is concerned about meeting basic needs like food and transportation while their child is receiving chemotherapy,” said pediatric oncologist Kira Bona, M.D., M.P.H.,  in a statement. “These children are more likely to relapse and die from their disease. Through IGNITE, we’re building the infrastructure necessary to address these inequities and change the landscape of pediatric cancer care for the better,” added Bona, a founding member  of the IGNITE Consortium who works at Data-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorder Center. 

 “Our consortium fills a critical gap in pediatric oncology by creating a framework that can rapidly develop, test, and evaluate health equity interventions. This is analogous to early-phase drug trials, but instead of testing new drugs, we’re addressing the root causes of disparities like poverty and access to care by testing supportive care interventions that directly target exposures like poverty,” added Bona.

The consortium held its inaugural meeting this past spring. This fall, the consortium will launch its first two collaborative research protocols. The first study will focus on socio-demographic data collection, aiming to understand the unmet social needs of children with newly diagnosed or relapsed cancer. The second study will test a new supportive care intervention tailored for low-income families, with the goal of improving relapse, survival, and psychosocial outcomes.