Anita Kumar

Anita J. Kumar, MD MSCE is a physician and doctoral student in Clinical and Translational Science at Tufts University in Boston, MA. The main subject of her studies is to understand and improve decision-making for adults with blood cancers. Dr. Kumar earned her bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her medical degree at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and completed her residency and hematology/oncology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. She also completed a Master of Science in clinical epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania.

As part of her doctoral thesis, Dr. Kumar will conduct an adaptive choice-based conjoint analysis to understand provider and patient preferences in treatment decisions for Hodgkin Lymphoma.

Hodgkin Lymphoma is an aggressive blood cancer that primarily affects patients ages 20-60. While the disease has 5-year survival rates of nearly 90%, patients may experience severe late toxicities as a result from their treatment even if their disease is cured. Late effects include second cancers, heart disease, lung injury, and other complications of radiation therapy. Over the past decade, the introduction of novel agents has changed the landscape of treatment for Hodgkin Lymphoma. Patients and their physicians now have options about which treatment to use at diagnosis, with various options offering different risks and benefits. There is little data on what preferences patients and providers value most when choosing initial treatment. Preferences include avoiding specific late toxicities, optimizing overall quality of life, and maximizing degree of long-term disease control. Leveraging the Sawtooth Software in adaptive choice-based conjoint analysis, attributes will be identified that are highly valued among providers and patients in decisions about treatment for Hodgkin Lymphoma.