MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - A new study out of the University of Minnesota shows women, who live in rural areas, are traveling nearly three times as far than their urban counterparts to get breast cancer treatment.
Colleen Longacre, a PhD student at the U of M, is the author of the study, which was recently published in the Journal of Rural Health. It specifically focuses on breast cancer patients receiving radiation therapy.
This browser does not support the Video element.
U of M study: Women in rural areas travel nearly three times farther for breast cancer treatment
A new study out of the University of Minnesota shows women, who live in rural areas, are traveling nearly three times as far than their urban counterparts to get breast cancer treatment.
She spent more than a year studying Medicare data from more than 52,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer between 2004 and 2013. Longacre found breast cancer patients in rural areas travel an average of 40.8 miles for radiation treatment compared to 15.4 miles for urban patients. She also found the nearest radiation facilities for rural women average about 22 miles away.
Longacre points out this is significant because conventional radiotherapy requires treatment for five days a week for five to seven weeks at a time.
“I hope people understand the burden that travel can place on patients, particularly patients that are living in rural areas and that it opens up discussions among clinicians, among patient advocates, among policy makers about what we can do to reduce travel burden for vulnerable patients,” said Longacre.
Some organizations work to reduce the amount of travel for patients. For exmaple, the American Cancer Society's Hope Lodge is a place people can stay while receiving treatment. Longacre hopes with more concrete evidence of how far people are traveling, more options like this will become available.
Longacre's next step of her research is looking at people who decided to forgo treatment due to distance.