VIDEO: Addressing gaps in 'five Ts of disparity' important for underserved myeloma populations

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There are many challenges that we face in multiple myeloma management, but when the question is what is an important, but lesser-known challenge, I think something that is very dear to my heart is health care disparities.

It is being talked about a lot. There’s tons of literature that is coming out, foundations are talking, grants are being given about trying to mitigate health care disparities. But I think when we talk about a community level or an oncologist’s treatment level, when they’re running their clinic in their office, the mere acknowledgement that health care disparities exist, that there are traditionally underserved populations in myeloma care, whether it’s racial/ethnic minorities, whether it’s elderly, patients who live in the rural areas, patients who have advanced organ dysfunction. These groups tend to be marginalized or not brought into the mainstream of myeloma management. And a lot of these advancements that we talk about, suddenly these groups just don't even get to access them. And to me that is extremely important.

When we talk about disparities in myeloma, I think traditionally different terms have been used, but I try to keep in mind the five Ts of disparity. There is the triplet therapy, time to diagnosis, transplant, CAR-T, and clinical trials. And, unfortunately, there is a lot of data that in all of these our underrepresented, underserved populations keep getting hit, because we're just not being able to bridge the gap enough. So I'm glad we're talking about it. What I want everybody to feel is that this is not just empty talk, but we're actually now trying to devise some solutions for it to try to bridge the gaps. And it is extremely important that patients are aware of this, physicians are aware of this, and they try to address when they're developing a management plan for a given patient, so that that patient does not end up being sidelined because they come from that underrepresented group of our population.