About the project
Title: The role of ethnicity in opioid prescribing and health service use in the last three months of life: a population based comparative cohort study of cancer patients
Funder: National Institute for Health Research - Research for Patient Benefit Programme
Time frame: 12 months/2022-2023
Contact for more details: Professor Jonathan Koffman and Sophie Law-Clucas
The role of ethnicity in opioid prescribing and health service use in the last three months of life is a collaboration between Hull York Medical School, University of Cambridge, and King’s College London.
Pain affects 80%-90% of cancer patients at the end of life, and with ethnic diversity increasing to 20.1% of the population by 2023 a growing number of people from ethnically diverse communities will be affected by cancer pain. Opioids are considered a quality marker for cancer pain relief leading to significant improvements in quality of life. With concern for inequalities at end-of-life, this project aims to examine if opioid prescribing patterns, along with primary and secondary health service use differs by ethnicity for cancer patients in the last three months of life.