acute myeloid leukemia (AML)

PURPOSE:
Patients who have cancer have leveraged the Internet to gain a better understanding of their disease and connect across geographic boundaries with others facing the same challenges. Online cancer communities have developed into resources that highlight new research and evolving care pathways. Combined with increasing health literacy and social media, they have enabled some patients to become experts in their cancer. This combination of empowerment and expertise describes the new “e-patients.”

Key Points
Structural racism (SR) assessed by census tract variables accounts for nearly all Black-white and Hispanic-white disparity in AML survival.

Structural Racism is a stronger mediator of survival disparities than molecular features, co-morbidities, healthcare access and treatment.

Driven by his mother’s advice and his father’s memory, Richard M. Stone, MD, rose to become a global leader in leukemia care and research.

Growing up, Richard M. Stone, MD, thought he was going to be an attorney like his father, but his direction in life changed when he was 15. His father, Benjamin, developed kidney cancer when Stone was just 5 years old, and 10 years later, the disease metastasized and took the man’s life.

Stone says he went from being middle class to poor rapidly after his father died. “And that sort of gave me the incentive to work hard,” he said.