Noelle LoConte, Associate Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, recently shared on X:

“New publication! ‘Same People, Different Results: Categorizing Cancer Registry Cases Across the Rural-Urban Continuum’
Here is a thread to go over the high points.

This paper includes collaborators Andrea Schiefelbein, Morgridge Institute, John Eason, Melissa Skala, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, student John Krebsbach, Chloe Haimson, University of Wisconsin Division of Hematology-Medical Oncology and Palliative Care, fellow Amy Taylor, Patrick Varley.

We looked at the performance of three measures of rurality for a cohort of pancreas cancer patients from the UW Health tumor registry – RUCC (Rural-Urban Continuum Codes), RUCA (Rural-Urban Commuting Area Codes) and IRR (Index of Relative Rurality).

Much to our surprise, all three indices behaved differently – the same patient was sometimes classified as mostly urban, sometimes mostly rural. In addition, not all indices were as easily linkable to tumor registry cases.

We conclude that RUCA is the best rurality index for cancer research given it is standardly available in national cancer registries, can be matched to the patient’s county of residence for local research, and had the least amount of fluctuation of the indices analyzed.”

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Source: Noelle LoConte/X