Implementing an oncology financial navigation program is feasible, provides concrete assistance in navigating the cost of care, and mitigates anxiety about costs in a subset of patients. Future work will focus on measuring the program's impact on financial and clinical outcomes.

OBJECTIVES Evidence suggests use of proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) and H2 blockers may provoke disease flares in individuals with established inflammatory bowel disease (IBD); however, there are no studies investigating the relationship of these medications with risk of developing pediatric IBD. The hypothesis was that use of acid suppression therapy in children might be associated with development of pediatric IBD. METHODS This was a nested case-control study of 285 Kaiser Permanente Northern California members, age ≤21 years diagnosed with IBD from 1996 to 2016. Four controls without IBD were matched to each case on age, race, and membership status at the case's index date. Disease risk scores (DRS) were computed for each subject. Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals were calculated by using conditional logistic regression models adjusted for DRS. RESULTS The children's mean age was 15.1 ± 2.6 years and 49.5% were female. Six cases (n = 3 Crohn's disease [CD], n = 3 ulcerative colitis [UC]) and 6 controls were prescribed PPIs and 10 cases (n = 7 CD, n = 3 UC) and 28 controls were prescribed H2 blockers. The OR for the association of at least 1 PPI or H2 blocker prescription with subsequent IBD was 3.6 (95% CI, 1.1–11.7) for PPIs and 1.6 (95% CI, 0.7–3.7) for H2 blockers. CONCLUSIONS Early-life PPI use appears to be associated with subsequent IBD risk. These findings have implications for clinical treatment of children with gastrointestinal symptoms and warrant further investigation in a larger cohort.

Background: There are no established methods for pancreatic cancer (PAC) screening, but the NCI and the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) are investigating risk-based screening strategies in patients with new-onset diabetes (NOD), a group with elevated PAC risk. Preliminary estimates of the cost-effectiveness of these strategies can provide insights about potential value and inform supplemental data collection. Using data from the Enriching New-Onset Diabetes for Pancreatic Cancer (END-PAC) risk model validation study, we assessed the potential value of CT screening for PAC in those determined to be at elevated risk, as is being done in a planned PanCAN Early Detection Initiative trial. Methods: We created an integrated decision tree and Markov state-transition model to assess the cost-effectiveness of PAC screening in patients aged ≥50 years with NOD using CT imaging versus no screening. PAC prevalence, sensitivity, and specificity were derived from the END-PAC validation study. PAC stage distribution in the no-screening strategy and PAC survival were derived from the SEER program. Background mortality for patients with diabetes, screening and cancer care expenditure, and health state utilities were derived from the literature. Life-years (LYs), quality-adjusted LYs (QALYs), and costs were tracked over a lifetime horizon and discounted at 3% per year. Results are presented in 2020 US dollars, and we took a limited US healthcare perspective. Results: In the base case, screening resulted in 0.0055 more LYs, 0.0045 more QALYs, and $293 in additional expenditures for a cost per QALY gained of $65,076. In probabilistic analyses, screening resulted in a cost per QALY gained of <$50,000 and <$100,000 in 34% and 99% of simulations, respectively. In the threshold analysis, >25% of screen-detected PAC cases needed to be resectable for the cost per QALY gained with screening to be <$100,000. Conclusions: We found that risk-based PAC screening in patients with NOD is likely to be cost-effective in the United States if even a modest fraction (>25%) of screen-detected patients with PAC are resectable. Future studies should reassess the value of this intervention once clinical trial data become available.

BACKGROUND: Disease-free survival (DFS) in early-stage human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive breast cancer is significantly greater with the addition of neratinib after adjuvant trastuzumab versus no additional therapy. However, it remains uncertain whether these survival gains represent good value for the money, given the substantial cost of neratinib.OBJECTIVE: To evaluate clinical and economic implications of adding neratinib after adjuvant trastuzumab based on results from the phase III ExteNET trial.METHODS: A 3-state Markov model was developed to estimate the costeffectiveness of neratinib for women with early-stage (I-III) HER2-positive breast cancer. Five-year recurrence rates were derived from the ExteNET trial. Mortality and recurrence rates after 5 years were derived from the HERceptin Adjuvant (HERA) trial. Outcomes included life-years, qualityadjusted life-years (QALYs), and direct medical expenditures. The analysis was performed from a payer perspective over a lifetime horizon. One-way sensitivity and probabilistic analyses were conducted to evaluate uncertainty.

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Background The etiology of endometriosis is not well understood. Limited evidence suggests that dietary factors influence risk, but prospective data related to carbohydrate, fiber, and gluten consumption are scarce. Despite this, recommendations concerning fiber, gluten intake and endometriosis are pervasive in the lay literature. Objective To investigate the association between carbohydrate quality (glycemic index [GI] and glycemic load [GL]), fiber intake (total, legume, vegetable, cruciferous vegetable, fruit, cereal), and gluten intake and incident laparoscopically-confirmed endometriosis. Methods A prospective cohort study using data collected from 81,961 premenopausal women in the Nurses’ Health Study II (mean age = 36 in 1991). Diet was assessed with a validated food frequency questionnaire every four years. Cox proportional hazards models were used to calculate rate ratios (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). Results 3,810 incident cases of laparoscopically-confirmed endometriosis were reported over 24 years of follow-up. Women in the highest quintile of GI had 12% (95% CI = 1.01-1.23, ptrend = 0.03) higher risk of endometriosis diagnosis than those in the lowest quintile. Total vegetable and cruciferous vegetable fiber intake were also associated with higher risk (highest vs lowest quintile RR = 1.13, 95% CI = 1.02-1.24, ptrend = 0.004; RR = 1.17, 95% CI = 1.06-1.29, ptrend = 0.02; respectively). Higher intake of fruit fiber was associated with lower risk of endometriosis but the association was not significant after adjusting for AHEI. Gluten intake was also associated with lower risk (highest vs lowest quintile = 0.91, 95% CI = 0.80-1.02, ptrend = 0.01), but these results were not consistent in direction nor statistical significance across sensitivity analyses. No association was observed for GL, total, legume, or cereal fiber intake. Conclusions Our findings suggest that carbohydrate quality and specific types of fiber – total vegetable and cruciferous vegetable fiber - are associated with endometriosis diagnosis in premenopausal women. These results also indicate it is unlikely that gluten intake is a strong factor in the etiology or symptomatology of endometriosis.

PurposeThe purpose of the present study was to determine user satisfaction with Nanny Angel Network (nan), a free childcare service for mothers undergoing cancer treatment.Methods All 243 living mothers who had used the nan service were invited by telephone to participate in an online research survey; 197 mothers (81%) consented to participate. The survey, sent by e-mail, consisted of 39 items divided into these categories: demographics, supports, use, satisfaction, and general comments. ResultsOf the 197 mothers who consented to receive the e-mailed survey, 104 (53%) completed it. More than 90% of the mothers were very satisfied with the help and support from their Nanny Angel. Many mothers mentioned that the Nanny Angel was most helpful during treatment and medical appointments, with 75% also mentioning that their Nanny Angel helped them to adhere to their scheduled medical appointments. However, 64% felt that they had not received enough visits from their Nanny Angel.Conclusions Satisfaction with the nan childcare provider was high, but mothers wished the service had been available to them more often. Our study highlights the importance of providing childcare to mothers with inadequate support systems, so as to allow for greater adherence to treatment and medical appointments, and for more time to recover.

Narrative electronic prescribing instructions (NEPIs) are text that convey information on the administration or co‐administration of a drug as directed by a prescriber. For researchers, NEPIs have the potential to advance our understanding of the risks and benefits of medications in populations; however, due to their unstructured nature, they are not often utilized. The goal of this scoping review was to evaluate how NEPIs are currently employed in research, identify opportunities and challenges for their broader application, and provide recommendations on their future use. The scoping review comprised a comprehensive literature review and a survey of key stakeholders. From the literature review, we identified 33 primary articles that described the use of NEPIs. The majority of articles (n = 19) identified issues with the quality of information in NEPIs compared with structured prescribing information; nine articles described the development of novel algorithms that performed well in extracting information from NEPIs, and five described the used of manual or simpler algorithms to extract prescribing information from NEPIs. A survey of 19 stakeholders indicated concerns for the quality of information in NEPIs and called for standardization of NEPIs to reduce data variability/errors. Nevertheless, stakeholders believed NEPIs present an opportunity to identify prescriber's intent for the prescription and to study temporal treatment patterns. In summary, NEPIs hold much promise for advancing the field of pharmacoepidemiology. Researchers should take advantage of addressing important questions that can be uniquely answered with NEPIs, but exercise caution when using this information and carefully consider the quality of the data.