SALUD Study - Survivorship and Access to Care for Latinos

The objective of the SALUD study is to identify and comprehensively assess adverse outcomes in a diverse cohort of survivors of childhood cancer, with the long-term goal of informing clinical guidelines and laying the foundation for early, targeted interventions that will prevent or mitigate adverse outcomes of cancer treatment.

SALUD is an accelerated longitudinal cohort study co-led by Drs. Gramatges, Kahalley, and Scheurer that builds on existing infrastructure and collaborations provided by the CPRIT-supported Adolescent and Childhood Cancer Susceptibility Service (ACCESS, PI Hoang).

In addition to blood or saliva samples collected for DNA analyses, plasma samples and buccal brushings are also collected at several time points during therapy and annually in survivorship. Patient-reported data are collected at each time point to assess quality of life, functional outcomes and symptoms, neurocognitive outcomes, and facilitators or barriers to accessing survivorship care. Associated epidemiological, clinical, and patient-reported outcome data can be linked to the samples to provide a rich resource for studying the risk factors for childhood cancer outcomes. Over the 6-year funding period, SALUD will recruit and collect data from 3,500 survivors of childhood cancer from across the state of Texas.