ArticleWMJ : official publication of the State Medical Society of Wisconsin2024
Same People, Different Results: Categorizing Cancer Registry Cases Across the Rural-Urban Continuum.
Article in WMJ : official publication of the State Medical Society of Wisconsin, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Cancer clinical trial recruitment for patients from rural areas: a scoping review.International journal for equity in health · 2026Article
- Leveraging the Rural-Urban Commuting Area Tool to Address Geographic Disparities in Cancer Care: A Dual-Application Framework for Institutional and National Initiatives.JCO clinical cancer informatics · 2025Article
- Urban-rural differences in cancer mortality: Operationalizing rurality.The Journal of rural health : official journal of the American Rural Health Association and the National Rural Health Care Association · 2024Article
- Defining rurality: an evaluation of rural definitions and the impact on survival estimates.Journal of the National Cancer Institute · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundMany rural-urban indexes are utilized in cancer research. This variation introduces inconsistencies between studies. Recommendations on index use have prioritized geographical unit over feasibility of inclusion in analysis. We evaluated rural-urban indexes and recommend one for use to increase comparability across studies.
methodsWe assessed 9 US rural-urban indexes regarding their respective rural and urban code ranges; geographical unit, land area, and population distributions; percent agreement; suitability for analysis; and integration feasibility for national, state, and local cancer research. We referenced 1569 Wisconsin Pancreatic Cancer Registry patients to demonstrate how index choice affects patient categorization.
resultsSix indexes categorized rural and urban areas. Indexes agreed on binary rural-urban designation for 88.8% of the US population. As ternary variables, they agreed for 83.4%. For cancer registry patients, this decreased to 73.4% and 60.4% agreement, respectively. Rural-Urban Continuum Codes (RUCC) performed the best in differentiating metropolitan, micropolitan, and rural counties; availability for retrospective and prospective studies; and continuous coding for analysis.
conclusionsUrban/rural patient categorization changed with index selection. We conclude that RUCC is an appropriate and feasible rural-urban index to include in cancer research, as it is standardly available in national cancer registries, can be matched to patient's county of residence for local research, and it had the least amount of fluctuation of the indices analyzed. Utilizing RUCC as a continuous variable across studies with a rural-urban component will increase reproducibility and comparability of results and eliminate rural-urban index choice as a potential source of discrepancy between studies.
Indexed as
Identifiers
38718234PMC11406676What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.