The personal and economic costs of cancer health disparities are incalculable. The medically underserved are more likely to be diagnosed with late-stage diseases that might have been treated more effectively or even cured if diagnosed earlier. To effectively improve the health of our communities we need to understand and address these disparities. Yet, before we address them systematically, we first must measure and then continue to monitor them.
The National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Research to Reality (R2R) July cyber-seminarwill explore efforts and tools to help researchers and practitioners monitor and evaluate community health disparities. The seminar will highlight the NCI tool, the Health Disparities Calculator (HD*Calc). HD*Calc is freely available statistical software designed to generate multiple summary measures to evaluate and monitor health disparities (HD). Dr. Nancy Breen and her colleagues from the NCI will provide an overview and demonstration of the tool and its purpose. Dr. Eva Wong of the Seattle and King County (WA) Health Department will then share how Seattle/King used the tool first to evaluate health disparities in their county. Dr. Wong will also share how HC*Calc helped them improve the programs they implement to address these disparities.
Join us in and learn about this exciting resource and how you might use it in your own research or community to address disparities.
Learning Objectives
At the end of the cyber-seminar, participants will be able to:
- Discuss a new tool to measure Health Disparities within communities.
- Understand how HD*Calc can help improve public health programming for communities.
Presenters
Health Economist,
Applied Research Program, Division of Cancer Control & Population Sciences,
National Cancer Institute
Epidemiologist,
Assessment, Policy Development & Evaluation Unit,
Department of Public Health-Seattle & King County.
Technical Requirements
The Cyber-Seminars use Microsoft Live Meeting. Your computer must be able to view Windows Media Player Files (WMV).
PC Browsers
Mac Browsers
Get more technical information about Live Meeting at Microsoft.com
Discuss this Cyber Seminar
Antoinette posted on July 17, 2012
I work with Dr. Nancy Breen at NCI on the HD*Calc program team and wanted to add to Dr. Wong's responses...
To William: HD*Calc allows for the import of population-based health data therefore, BRFSS and YBRSS data are ok to import. Bear in mind that imported statistics are not calculated by HD*Calc but by the initial software the user chooses to use. HD*Calc generates multiple measures of disparity after importing data into the calculator software.
To JMartin: Keep in mind that HD*Calc is not intended to replace other analyses. It offers a suite of summary measures so that users can compare the results of various approaches to measuring disparities. HD*Calc can also be used for pairwise comparison.