In the US, there is a significant skin cancer burden of disease that drives healthcare costs and utilization. Recent advancements in treatment modalities have lessened the morbidity & mortality incurred by patients. However, while this progress is improving the burden of disease, further work must be dedicated towards identifying and characterizing the highest at-risk populations to allow for more targeted interventions. The skin cancer community has a broad understanding of the risk factors that traditionally lead to the occurrence of disease, but limited knowledge exists on how to predict who will present with advanced disease. Within the public health and social science sectors, there has been significant work evaluating how socioeconomic status and other related social factors, and how they relate spatially, influence disease and care delivery. There has also been a refocus on how prominent diseases influence the delay in treatment for less “critical” medical problems. This has been demonstrated with COVID-19 and how the epidemic has created an access-to-care barrier for timely care of diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. In reviewing this current work, we have recognized that there is a gap in our understanding on how social access-to-care barriers and other disease priorities, along with their geospatial influence, act as risk factors, or magnify traditional risk factors, that impact the development of advanced skin cancer disease.

The primary focus of the Laboratory for Dermatologic Oncology, lead by Dr Oliver Wisco, is to assess how social, geospatial, and access-to-care factors, along with traditional skin cancer risk factors and genetic predisposition, influence skin cancer disease severity to better address high-risk populations. In the US, there is a significant skin cancer burden of disease that drives healthcare costs and utilization. Recent advancements in treatment modalities have lessened the morbidity & mortality incurred by patients. However, while this progress is improving the burden of disease, further work must be dedicated towards identifying and characterizing the highest at-risk populations to allow for more targeted interventions. The skin cancer community has a broad understanding of the risk factors that traditionally lead to the occurrence of disease, but limited knowledge exists on how to predict who will present with advanced disease. Within the public health and social science sectors, there has been significant work evaluating how socioeconomic status and other related social factors, and how they relate spatially, influence disease and care delivery. There has also been a refocus on how prominent diseases influence the delay in treatment for less “critical” medical problems. This has been demonstrated with COVID-19 and how the epidemic has created an access-to-care barrier for timely care of diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. In reviewing this current work, we have recognized that there is a gap in our understanding on how social access-to-care barriers and other disease priorities, along with their geospatial influence, act as risk factors, or magnify traditional risk factors, that impact the development of advanced skin cancer disease. As such, the primary focus of the Laboratory for Dermatologic Oncology, lead by Dr Oliver Wisco, is to assess how social, geospatial, and access-to-care factors, along with traditional skin cancer risk factors and genetic predisposition, influence skin cancer disease severity to better address high-risk populations.