ArticleJCO clinical cancer informatics2025
Leveraging the Rural-Urban Commuting Area Tool to Address Geographic Disparities in Cancer Care: A Dual-Application Framework for Institutional and National Initiatives.
Article in JCO clinical cancer informatics, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Access and Attrition Across Audiology and Cochlear Implant Care Among Older Adults with Bilateral Sensorineural Hearing Loss.Otology & neurotology open · 2026Article
- Association between walkability and diverse health metrics: moderating role of social vulnerability.Journal of healthy eating and active living · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeWe developed and validated a dual-purpose, open-access Rural-Urban Commuting Area (RUCA) tool to standardize geographic coding for cancer disparities research, addressing National Institutes of Health (NIH) Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative Common Data Element requirements while supporting institutional catchment area analyses.
methodsThis web-based tool
resultsAmong 21,219 patients with cancer, 19.51% (n = 4,140) resided in rural areas, with 4.81% (n = 1,022) in the most rural census tracts (RUCA codes 7-10). Comparative analysis revealed 9.4% disagreement between RUCA and RUCC classifications, affecting 1,765 patients. Twenty-eight ZIP codes classified as rural by RUCA were located within metropolitan counties according to RUCC, encompassing 109 patients with cancer who would be misclassified using county-level measures. As a separate use case, integration with NIH HEAL Initiative standardized rurality data collection across 15 research studies.
conclusionThe RUCA tool addresses critical gaps in geographic data standardization by providing census tract-level precision that county-level classifications miss. This dual-application framework aligns institutional catchment analyses with national standardization efforts, identifying 109 patients with cancer who would be misclassified as urban residents using traditional county-level approaches, thereby enhancing targeted interventions for rural cancer care access.
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