Medicine & Health
Evaluating the Influence of Socioeconomic Status on the Effectiveness of CATCH in Advancing Access to Ovarian Cancer Genetic Testing
Drew Siegel
Medicine & Health
Drew Siegel
As of 2020, an estimated 236,511 women live with ovarian cancer in the United States. Given the high prevalence of genetic variants, multiple organizations, including ASCO, recommend universal genetic counseling and yearly testing. Nearly 1% of individuals have a hereditary cancer predisposition syndrome; however, most individuals with hereditary ovarian cancer syndrome are unaware of their underlying mutation, and racial and ethnic minority individuals, as well as patients of low socioeconomic status, experience disproportionate rates of unrecognition. This can often lead to late and missed diagnoses. Knowledge of a patient's family history can significantly ease the triaging process for genetic testing when doctors have evidence of a family cancer history, leading to more immediate access to genetic testing. However, family history collection has historically been challenging to execute and inaccurate for several reasons. The Cancer Assessment Tool for Collecting History (CATCH), a decision tree algorithm that incorporates genetic testing criteria outlined in national guidelines for the assessment of genetic risk, will be utilized to address this issue. In this study, patients from a Medicaid clinic will be compared to patients from a private-insurance clinic to analyze how responsive each group is to this application and whether it could solve the flawed family history assessment system. The response will be measured through a survey given to patients, which will assess potential accessibility barriers, including language, level of education, and health literacy, to name a few. Additionally, the response will be determined by analyzing whether socioeconomic contributes to follow-up genetic counseling and testing rates.Â