CHICAGO — The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) conference was held on May 29 – June 2, 2026 at McCormick Place. The Lincolnwood Times received the opportunity to cover the science conference. The conference was a glorious opportunity for research poster presenters, non-profit organizations, pharmaceutical companies and cancer survivors to come together, network and share knowledge and understanding of battling different types of cancer.
Dr. Satheesh kumar Poolakkad Sankaran, poster presenter and researcher from Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, presented a research poster titled “Social Determinants of Health and Long-Term Outcomes in Prostate Cancer: Increased Mortality, Poorer Survival, and Heightened Comorbidity Risks in a Propensity Score-Matched Federated Database Analysis.” In a nutshell, Dr. Sankaran’s research team has discovered that long-term outcomes are often worsened for individuals with cancer when they have a lack of housing, food, income or transportation. These four variables are referred to as social determinants of health (SDoH) because health conditions often worsen when a patient has poor or no access to the aforementioned variables. “Some of the patients [are] living in low-income neighborhoods, living in worse conditions [and] who don’t have transportation,” Dr. Sankaran said. “Looking at Buffalo, where transportation is a huge problem.”
A part of Dr. Sankaran’s research helps to explain a major limitation in research data. “So during the data collection, we have examined almost like 900,000 patients [and] among those 900,000 patients, we only have few of the patients which we could match to the adverse event,” Dr. Sankaran said. “For example, adverse events, social determinants of health information was only available for 12,000 patients. So that means the social determinants of health variable—ICD codes—were only available at later phase and some of the hospitals in the tertiary care system already had those variables being examined.” ICD codes are codes that doctors use to diagnose patients for health records and billing, like a specific type of tumor would have a specific ICD code.
Historically, hospitals have not been consistent in recording whether patients are struggling with housing, food or transportation. Given the nature of Dr. Sankaran’s study, the research team was only able to sift through the SDoH data of approximately 1.33 percent of the oncology patients from the original 900,000 patients.
“The social determinants of health is not a one time point assessment” Dr. Sankaran said. “It needs to be assessed at different time points especially during the cancer continuum or treatment or the survivorship care too because that support will improve their long-term outcome.”
Certain locations in the community are likely to bridge the gap for individuals fighting cancer. “What we found is that the African-Americans are more importantly comfortable in their places such as barber shops and beauty parlors or some of them are comfortable in the churches,” Dr. Sankaran said. As a result of the research, “we are partnering with community-based partners like churches and barbershops and beauty parlor[s] to reach out to the community,” he said. In other words, these are all ‘third places’ that are important for a person’s well-being in addition to home and work/school.
Much like Dr. Sankaran’s research, Hala Awad, poster presenter, researcher, and PhD candidate at University of Rochester, focused her research on a different minority population. “The gap that we are addressing [are] LGBTQ+ cancer survivors, who were under-represented and ignored in clinical research,” Awad said.
One goal of Awad’s research is to bring more attention to LGBTQ+ individuals. “Their quality of life is still not perfect because of all of the stress that comes with the treatment and after treatment, including some people lose their jobs, some people lose their houses, [and] some people lose their partners,” Awad said.
“So those patients who are affected with social determinants of health—I believe that during the cancer continuum, even the whole family is affected,” Dr. Sankaran said. Awad echoed this sentiment regarding post-treatment stress. “It’s about improving patient outcome who already survived cancer and went through the treatment journey,” Awad said. “So, I would say that there [are] people who survived this journey and they are also suffering from disparities because they are a minority and these people need our support and need our attention and our care.”
Awad presented a research poster titled “Dyadic exercise intervention for LGBTQ+ cancer survivors: Associations with health-related quality of life fatigue, and inflammation biomarkers.” The purpose of the study was “to see if exercising with your partner will improve your outcomes in terms [of] fatigue, insomnia, health care quality and also the stress related to the relationship outcome,” Awad said.
Non-profit organizations frequently attend science conferences in order to learn about potential new offerings that can benefit neighborhoods and local communities. “So it’s really expertise within the community or across the nation. Just those physicians and those researchers that are in it. They’re researching,” Dustin Wilson, Director of Community Impact at Wellness House, said. “They’re in it every day just finding their expertise and bringing it to our participants, so that they’re more well-educated, and we’re empowering them to advocate for themselves and know what’s the right path for them.”
Wellness House is a nonprofit patient advocacy and mentorship organization to support individuals on their individualized cancer journeys. Wellness House’s main location is in Hinsdale, IL and offers exercise, nutrition, support groups and stress management from specialists. Wellness House also offers a concept called “unique boutique.”
Local spaces solve some of the SDoH issues that Dr. Sankaran researched. Wellness House’s unique boutique achieves the title of a ‘third place’ much like churches and barbershops achieve, as found in Dr. Sankaran’s research.
“We offer what we call our ‘unique boutique,’ which is an opportunity for the individual who’s going through the cancer journey—as they enter that phase of their cancer journey where they start to lose their hair—our unique boutique will offer them a free wig during that hair loss time,” Wilson said. Salon services are also given to the patient during this period of the cancer journey. “So as their hair starts to grow back, we also offer mindfulness and meditation for Reiki massage,” Wilson said.
Third places are necessary foundational locations for people in general, but cancer patients need an additional space that is not home or work/school more than other people. Wellness House is this ‘third place’ because “our location is literally a house. So it’s another location that makes them feel [at] home,” Wilson said. “And it’s not like they’re going into another institutional place where they will receive their treatments. So it’s really about making them feel comfortable where they are and where they live.”
“So we know that social determinants of health is key in making sure that everyone has access to any sort of supportive oncology services,” Wilson said. “So for us it’s really about making sure that we’re finding those marginalized communities and helping them get access, which is why we try to get what we call our hub and spoke locations like UIC, Rush and Loyola so that we’re getting it to the communities and closer to the communities that need it.”
Researchers from educational institutes and supporters from non-profit organizations are a large part of ASCO, but the cancer survivors are the heroes that make the work worthwhile. “It was really fun being in the patient advocate lounge, and I got to meet lung cancer survivors, pancreatic cancer survivors and just share how we’re all supporting each other,” Cynthia Rodriguez, CEO of Circle Signal, Inc. and patient advocate cancer survivor, said.
By connecting with different cancer survivors in person, empathy is often developed. “I heard that lung cancer still [has] a big stigma from what I heard from the lung cancer patients,” Rodriguez said. “And not enough funding even though it’s like the number one cause of cancer death because there’s a stigma [that is believed] ‘Oh these are all smokers and like they caused this; they did this to themselves,’ and that’s pretty sad and also pancreatic cancer that there’s not enough funding for them and not enough breakthrough information for them.”
“I created a prototype of an app called Circle Signal,” Rodriguez said. The idea came from a problem that Rodriguez was facing. “There’s no brochures in the doctor’s office [for] a side effect of chemo that nobody talks about and it’s a psychosocial communication fatigue. I looked at my phone one time, and I had 47 unread messages from people who cared for me and were concerned and wanted information,” Rodriguez said.
Connecting with people is necessary, but it becomes tiring when dealing with cancer treatments. “And I had no energy. I was sick. It was really taxing for me to respond to everybody to give everybody the appropriate update depending on the relationship. Some things that I’d be able to share with some people or [some things that] I don’t want to tell my boss,” Rodriguez said. Thus, the idea for the Circle Signal app was born.
“I wanted this to be a free social, communication app for all cancer patients that they can receive at the time of diagnosis because that’s when the problem starts when everybody finds out the news of your cancer,” Rodriguez said.
Boundaries are important when establishing relationships with people, and Circle Signal offers just that. “Circle Signal has a built-in boundary that there’s no reply on that message that update they get. You cannot reply on there. There’s only emojis; [they] are able to respond with emojis. So, there’s no back and forth conversation [because] I don’t have the energy to finish.”
After downloading the Circle Signal app, the cancer patient “uploads the existing contacts on their phone and then adds them to three circles, one of three circles, [1] your inner circle, [2] your support circle, or [3] your community,” Rodriguez said. “So the people you would give the most details to, you put them in your inner circle. And once you’re done with that, that’s it. You’re all set up. It’s a really easy on-boarding and setup. And then when you want to do an update, all you click is which circle you want to send it to.”
“[Circle Signal] protects your privacy. It protects your peace. It’s really important for healing and also staying connected to your people which is really helpful,” Rodriguez said. “And I had a problem where I started isolating, and you could easily go into depression when that starts happening and then you don’t have the energy to go to treatments, and it could really affect the outcome of your treatments when you’re going on you’re on your cancer journey.” Circle Signal is a free app by the non-profit organization Circle Signal Inc., which has a 501(c)(3) federal tax-exemption status, according to Rodriguez.
ASCO was an incredible science conference for the scientists, exhibitors, non-profit organizations and cancer survivors to congregate and share knowledge with one another. It can definitely be intimidating for first time attendees of any conference, but everybody is there for a common goal of sharing information, networking and supporting each other. The next ASCO Annual Meeting will take place from June 4 – 8, 2027 at McCormick Place.