Cancer Screening During the 2nd Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) Podcast

Dr. Shannon Westin and her guests, Jessica Star and Dr. Ahmedin Jemal, discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic affected cancer screening in the US in 2021.
TRANSCRIPT
The guest on this podcast episode has no disclosures to declare. 
Dr. Shannon Westin: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of JCO After Hours. I am your host, Shannon Westin, the social media editor for the JCO and Gynecological Oncologist at MD Anderson. And it's my pleasure to welcome you to our next episode, which is “Cancer Screening in the United States During the Second Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic.” And please note the authors have no conflict of interest.  
I'm joined by two of the authors on this important work. First is Jessica Star, who has an MA and an MPH and is Associate Scientist II for Cancer Risk Factors and Screening Surveillance Research at the American Cancer Society. Welcome. 
Jessica Star: Thank you for having me. 
Dr. Shannon Westin: Of course. And we're also joined by Dr. Ahmedin Jemal, the Senior Vice President for Surveillance and Health Equity Science at the American Cancer Society. Welcome. 
We're so excited that you both are here, and I'm hoping that we'll have a really lively discussion about your important work. This paper was published online on February 23, 2023, in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. So let's level set. We'll start—Jessica, can you talk a little bit about how the COVID-19 pandemic initially impacted cancer screening in the United States? 
Jessica Star: So the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the delivery and receipt of routine preventative services, and that included cancer screening. What we've seen from a lot of 2020 data that has been published is that cancer screening declined during that first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. One of those papers includes a paper by the American Cancer Society led by Stacey Fedewa. And many other studies also reported similar declines, including for breast, cervical, prostate, and colorectal cancer screening. However, some of these papers, by the end of 2020, it appeared that screening rates were starting to rebound back to pre-pandemic rates. And so that was sort of the interest in looking at that 2021 data now.
Dr. Shannon Westin: And what did you hypothesize? Did you think that these data were correct? Like, did you think that we were going to start seeing an increase in screening in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, or what were your suppositions?
Jessica Star: Yes, I think we kind of hypothesized or hoped, based off of what we were seeing from the 2020 data, that we would start seeing more substantial increases as we were getting into 2021. Based off of those declines during the first part of the pandemic, we were really wanting to see individuals coming back into screening now that stay-at-home orders had sort of been reduced and now that individuals were going back to screening more frequently.
Dr. Ahmedin Jemal: I might add that the motivation for this screening, in addition to what Jessica said, is that the previous studies were based on representative US populations, either based on claims data or state-specific population-based studies. They were not based on nationwide population-based study. That's why we used the NHIS, National Health Interview Survey, which is a US population-based study, to look at whether screening in 2022 has returned to the pre-pandemic level. 
Dr. Shannon Westin: Yeah, why don't we get into a little bit more detail here? I would love—Jessica, can you talk a little bit more about the National Health Interview Survey? I get the idea of why you all used it, but can you tell our listeners just a little bit more about that database?
Jessica Star: To go off of what Ahmedin mentioned, The National Health Interview Survey is a nationally representative cross-sectional household survey of the United States population that is generalizable. And that survey is housed by the National Center for Health Statistics in