Description:

Lucia Petito, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Epidemiology
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Harvard University

Presentation Title
A causal approach to real-world data: emulating randomized trials in SEER-Medicare

Brief Abstract
Researchers are often interested in evaluating the comparative effectiveness of cancer therapies. Most commonly, these questions are addressed by conducting randomized trials, where the treatment assignment is randomized. However, large randomized trials can be prohibitively expensive or logistically infeasible, so researchers have turned to observational data sources to generate evidence to answer these questions. Unfortunately, naïve analyses of observational data easily lend themselves to misleading and biased results. Here, we will discuss best practices when applying the target trial framework developed by Hernán & Robins (2016) to emulate randomized trials in the SEER-Medicare linked database. As a case study, we will consider the emulation of a trial to evaluate adjuvant fluorouracil to treat stage II colorectal cancer.