Consumer credit as a novel marker for economic burden and health after cancer in a diverse population of breast cancer survivors in the USA

• DOI: 10.1007/s11764-017-0669-1
• Publication Date: 2018-01-25T05:39:45Z
• Authors: Lorraine T. Dean; Kathryn H. Schmitz; Kevin D. Frick; Lauren H. Nicholas; Yuehan Zhang; S. V. Subramanian; Kala Visvanathan
• Keywords: Health Economics; Population Health

Consumer credit may reflect financial hardship that patients face due to cancer treatment, which in turn impact ability manage health after cancer; however, credit's relationship economic burden and has not been evaluated. From May September 2015, 123 women with a history of breast residing Pennsylvania or New Jersey completed cross-sectional survey demographics, socioeconomic position, comorbidities, SF-12 self-rated health, since diagnosis, psychosocial stress, self-reported (poor excellent) quality. Ordinal logistic regression evaluated contribution health. Mean respondent age was 64 years. year from diagnosis 11.5. Forty percent respondents were Black Other 60% White. Twenty-four poor credit, 76% reported good excellent In adjusted models, changing income, using savings, borrowing money, being unable purchase need associated poorer credit. Better 7.72 ([1.22, 14.20], p = 0.02) higher physical t-score, − 2.00 ([− 3.92, 0.09], 0.04) point change stress. This exploratory analysis establishes the premise for consumer as marker survivors. Future work should validate these findings larger samples other conditions. Stabilizing monitoring be potential intervention mitigating cancer.