Children and families from low-income households or remote regions as well as racial and ethnic minorities are likely to face unique logistical and financial challenges both during and after cancer treatment. For example, families in the lowest income quantiles may struggle to cover the indirect costs of treatment, such as travel, accommodation, and loss of parental income due to caregiving responsibilities. These financial pressures can have long lasting consequences both financially (e.g., inability to return to a job) and psychosocially (e.g., increased stress\/anxiety). This project will use national data at Statistics Canada explore how various socioeconomic and geographic factors impact the financial, employment, and educational outcomes of childhood cancer survivors and their family members.<\/p>\n
Team members:<\/strong><\/p>\n Funding: <\/strong>ACCESS network<\/a> (2025-2026)<\/p>\n<\/div> Children with cancer often need to travel long distances for care, as most treatment centres in Ontario are in big cities. To help families, POGO’s Satellite Program allows the transfer of aspects of a child\u2019s care to a community hospital closer to home. This project aims to measure the value of the Satellite Program by estimating how much travel and costs families have avoided by visiting Satellite centres instead of major hospitals. The team will also explore why some families choose to use these centres while others do not. Lastly, they will predict the impacts of expanding the Program in Ontario and initiating a similar one in Quebec.<\/p>\n Team members:<\/strong><\/p>\n Funding:<\/strong> Canadian Cancer Society (2025-2028)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div> This project will study the impact of paediatric cancer on the income, employment, and education outcomes of survivors, parents, and siblings. In collaboration with Statistics Canada, we will create a national dataset that contains information on childhood cancer diagnoses and treatment, linked to birth, death, tax, and education records, which will help us to follow the economic trajectory of survivors and their families for decades after cancer treatment. Results from t<\/span>his project will help describe the types of survivors and family members who struggle financially after a childhood cancer diagnosis and inform the development of supports.<\/span><\/p>\n Team members:<\/strong><\/p>\n Funding: <\/strong>Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2024-2025)<\/a> <\/span>\/ Canadian Cancer Society (2024-2027)<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div> Novel treatments continue to emerge for pediatric cancers which demonstrate significant improvements in survival. For a new therapy to be funded by provincial health payers, reimbursement authorities like Canada\u2019s Drug Agency (CDA) require evidence of clinical efficacy, safety, and cost-effectiveness, summarized through a health technology assessment (HTA). This project aims to develop a standardized process, and set of technical materials, to expedite clinician-led HTA submissions for novel pediatric cancer therapies.<\/p>\n Investigators: <\/strong>Dr. Petros Pechlivanoglou, Dr. Sumit Gupta, Dr. Paul Gibson, Dr. Avram Denburg.<\/p>\n Funding:<\/strong> Garron Family Cancer Centre<\/a> (2025-2028)<\/p>\n<\/div> This grant aims to utilize a suite of health-care databases in Ontario, Canada that capture all contacts with the health-care system. We will identify over 100,000 survivors of AYA cancer through cancer records and compare them to over 500,000 individuals without cancer to study physical, mental, and functional effects of surviving AYA cancer, determine risk factors for developing late effects of cancer therapy and study health-care utilization patterns.<\/p>\n Team members:<\/b><\/p>\n Funding:<\/b> United States Department of Defense (2022\u20132025)<\/p>\n<\/div> We will design an electronic system for survivors of childhood cancer in Ontario to receive reminders about screening tests that can help detect late effects of cancer therapy. We will test the effectiveness of this system in a randomized clinical trial to determine whether it improves screening and has the potential to be transitioned into a sustainable provincial program.<\/span><\/p>\n Team members:<\/b><\/p>\n\n
Estimating the Value of Reducing Geographical Disparities in Pediatric Cancer Care<\/strong><\/h2><\/div>
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The impact of childhood cancer on the socioeconomic outcomes of survivors and their families<\/h2><\/div>
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Developing Clinician-Initiated Reimbursement Submissions in Paediatric Cancer; Applications and Process Standardization<\/h2><\/div>
Physical, psychological, financial late effects and health-care use in survivors of adolescent and young adult cancer: A population-based study<\/h2><\/div>
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Evaluation of a system-wide surveillance system for late effects of treatment in childhood cancer survivors in Ontario (ONLOOP)<\/h2><\/div>
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