Gulf South Minority/Underserved Clinical Trials Network (Gulf South M/U CTN)

Cancer patients overall are at increased risk for developing COVID-19. Both cancer and COVID-19 disproportionately affect minority and underserved populations throughout the country and especially in the Gulf South region of Louisiana and Mississippi. These major health disparities are further magnified in cancer patients living in rural areas and regions of concentrated disadvantage (high poverty). Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop a new Louisiana Cancer-COVID-19 (LA-Cancer-COVID-19 Registry) registry to better understand the impact of the current pandemic on cancer patients in the Gulf South Region. The data obtained will be used to understand how COVID-19 has affected existing cancer health disparities and will prepare us for new national diagnostic and treatment initiatives. The parent grant to this supplement is the Gulf South Minority/Underserved Clinical Trials Network (Gulf South CTN) NCORP. The Gulf South CTN is a partnership between LSU Cancer Center - New Orleans, Ochsner Clinic Foundation, Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center and LSU- Feist Weiller Cancer Center in Shreveport. Together they oversee a network of 44 clinical sites that have significantly increased enrollments of cancer patients into clinical trials throughout the region. Approximately 50% of patients enrolled are African American. The Louisiana Tumor Registry (LTR), a SEER registry, is also a partner in the Gulf South CTN. The LTR collects all information on cancer patients in the state and has legislative mandate to access all their biological samples and clinical information. For the purpose of this Supplement, the LTR and the Office of Public Health at the Louisiana Department of Health, that oversees the response to COVID-19, have agreed to build this new registry. Therefore the Specific Aims are: 1) Develop the Louisiana Cancer - COVID-19 Registry by linking the LTR cancer registry with the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) COVID-19 registry. 2) Use the data from the new registry to study the effect of COVID-19 on cancer health disparities in Louisiana, and 3) More effectively participate in national clinical and epidemiological studies through the coordinated data collection efforts of the Louisiana CancerCOVID-19 Registry. The LA-Cancer-COVID-19 Registry will allow us to identify cancer patients who have developed COVID-19 and identify those at high risk for developing the infection and to determine the location of coronavirus "hot spots". We will be able to determine how COVID-19 impacts cancer health disparities in different populations and in rural vs urban locations. More importantly the Cancer-COVID19 Registry will better prepare us for a resurgence of COVID-19 or other future pandemics by rapidly deploy being able to deploy diagnostic, treatment or epidemiological trials.