Lamont Lab: Elizabeth B. Lamont, MD, MS

Overview

Research at the Lamont Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital focuses on how non-malignant factors play a role in development, diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

Within this agenda, I have particular interest in the use of large administrative data sets to examine the role of patient demographic factors, medical comorbidity, and referral patterns on two broad areas: cancer in the elderly and cancer care at the end of life. The methodologies I have employed are those relevant to both primary data collection (i.e., patient and physician surveys) and secondary data analysis (i.e., analyses of Medicare claims data and clinical trial data). Currently, the majority of my research time is directed at a project entitled "Do Medicare claims measure chemotherapy use and outcome," an NCI-funded career award through which I am establishing the validity Medicare chemotherapy claims for future research.

Results of this validation work are currently being applied to two distinct collaborative projects that require evaluation of administrative health care claims to estimate chemotherapy use and outcome. The first project is a Department of Health Care Policy-based evaluation of the quality of cancer care provided to veterans with cancer by the Veterans Administration health care system. The second project represents a cross-Harvard collaboration with investigators from Harvard Medical School, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences evaluating the importance of social and health care context (i.e., environment) on the full trajectory of cancer from onset through death.

Publications