SHREVEPORT – LSUS researchers received a nearly $130,000 grant to measure access to treatment for colorectal cancer patients in Louisiana.

The grant originated from the Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity Program, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.

Lead researcher Dr. Subhajit Chakrabarty, an associate professor in computer science, is guiding a project that studies how far Louisiana residents travel to receive treatment for colorectal cancer and how distance and other demographic and economic factors impact patient outcomes.

“It’s crucial for people undergoing cancer treatment to have regular checkups and quick access to medical institutions that are capable of treating colorectal cancer, not just diagnosing it,” Chakrabarty said. “We are looking for areas that are underserved in which treatment isn’t available within reasonable driving distance.

“The idea is to alert policymakers to areas of concern. These areas might have general hospitals who can catch it and diagnose it, but we’re looking at barriers to treatment, which include travel distance.”

Colorectal cancer is the second deadliest cancer in the United States.

Louisiana ranks in the top 10 in colorectal cancer incidence and mortality rates, with 44.5 cases per and 15.4 deaths per 100,000 residents from 2017-2021, according to the National Cancer Institute’s state cancer profiles.

Grant funding began in October and has already yielded one paper that’s scheduled to be published this month at the IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine, one of the most respected conferences of its kind internationally.

This paper is centered around the research’s Locational Health Access metric, which measures the road distance from each census tract (about 20 per parish) to the nearest medical facility that can treat colorectal cancer.

Dr. Peter Siska, an LSUS biological sciences professor whose specialties include geographic information systems, performed the GIS work necessary for this metric.

Other researchers involved in this project include LSU Health’s Dr. Steven Conrad (professor of medicine) and Alcorn State’s Dr. Debarshi Roy (assistant professor of biology who is a cancer biologist). The grant also provides for three LSUS computer science students to be involved in the research.

Roy led a pilot study that involved Chakrabarty in a similar study in Mississippi, which served as a pilot for this larger study.

The research will gather survey data from Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport colorectal patients who are Louisiana residents.

“We can go from data at the census tract level to the individual patient level,” Chakrabarty said. “In this way, we can integrate social, economic, and demographic data such as income, race and ethnicity, level of health insurance, and various health access data as well as colorectal cancer outcomes (mortalities, etc.).

“Have they had a colonoscopy, and do they have access to that? Is income the primary barrier or are their other barriers that affect outcomes?”

The research could potentially reduce health disparities among Louisiana colorectal cancer patients.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning will be used to digest large amounts of census and patient data, including electronic health records and various images such as X-ray/MRI/CT scans.

“The ultimate goal is to create an integrated index of health access,” Chakrabarty said. “Once we have a metric and index for Louisiana, we can find out if this can be replicated in other states for colorectal cancer or for other cancers in Louisiana.”

Measuring health access consists of assessing the extent to which individuals can obtain timely, affordable, and appropriate healthcare services.