Presentation description

Rural and urban cancer disparities in prostate cancer survival are well-documented. The cause of worse outcomes among rural prostate cancer survivors is not well-understood. Prior research has shown that rural communities have higher use of prescribed and illicit opioid use than many urban locations. The purpose of this research is to investigate whether persistent opioid use after treatment may explain the observed worse survival among rural prostate cancer survivors. We hypothesize that rural patients are more likely to receive a prescription for opioids more than a year after prostate cancer treatment that urban counterparts. Our methods include the retrospective cohort study using the Utah Population Database linked with all-payer claims data. More specifically, men with prostate cancer who were diagnosed between 2012 and 2017. Reviewing this data, We identified 960 rural and matched to 6,026 urban prostate cancer survivors. We found that rural survivors are older, more likely to be non-Hispanic white, have higher stage disease at diagnosis, and to forgo initial treatment compared to urban men. Overall, differences in persistent opioid use after treatment for prostate cancer does not appear to explain observed differences between rural and urban prostate cancer survivors.|