SCI Women’s Cancer Center Innovation Award

Ensuring equitable and high-quality care for all patients with breast cancer is a critical challenge. Disparities in care arise for a variety of reasons. Whereas some, such as a patient's insurance status, are beyond a clinician's control, others may reflect clinical knowledge gaps. With funding from the SCI Women's Cancer Center Innovation Award, Kurian, Caswell-Jin and Dickerson will examine whether clinicians providing suboptimal care share any common characteristics or patterns. The goal of the project is not to single out individual clinicians but to understand the factors that correlate with less-than-ideal care. By analyzing these patterns, the researchers hope to provide valuable insights to clinicians, administrators, and organizations, and enable development of tailored policy solutions. For example, they will examine whether clinicians appropriately prescribe chemotherapy based on established guidelines. If newer clinicians deviate more from established guidelines relative to more experienced providers, interventions could include additional mentorship to help new clinicians navigate the complexities of breast cancer treatment. By understanding and addressing such patterns, the research will reduce disparities in care for patients with breast cancer.