Socio-Economic Predictors of Cancer

Abstract

The article presents the results of the pilot phase of an interdisciplinary study of socio-demographic, economic, and professional predictors of malignant neoplasms to identify a typical portrait of a cancer patient, considering both clinical and non-clinical characteristics. Based on the basic methodology of health capital and specifying the methodological framework of the study, in particular, highlighting the concept of a healthy lifestyle, questionnaire cancer-screening, a new direction in the study of human capital -the concept of subjective well-being, as well as existing methods for assessing the 124 Е.В. Михалкина и др. / Journal of Institutional Studies, 12(3), 122-141 quality of life of people with cancer (QOL-CS), the authors propose a new comprehensive tools for the diagnosis of socio-demographic, economic, professional predictors of malignant neoplasms, supplementing, in turn, the diagnosis of clinical predictors. The article presents the result of testing the proposed tools by conducting and analyzing an electronic questionnaire of 102 informants who are patients of the National Medical Research Center of Oncology (Rostov-on-Don). In the framework of the pilot study, the initial hypothesis was confirmed that the financial and economic situation of individuals, the type and nature of employment, the characteristics of their social and emotional well-being, satisfaction with working conditions, and social status can influence or act as catalysts for malignant neoplasms. A similar approach to explaining and managing health capital determines the priority and timeliness of the use of technologies that prevent the impact of negative factors and predictors as a direction for the development of preventive medicine.