{"doi":"10.12788/fp.0560","title":"Colorectal Cancer Characteristics and Mortality From Propensity Score-Matched Cohorts of Urban and Rural Veterans","abstract":"Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States.Rural living poses special challenges to CRC screening and management, but it is unclear whether rural/urban disparities persist within the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).Methods: This study used VHA data to examine characteristics and mortality among veterans with newly diagnosed CRC.Urban areas were defined using Rural Urban Commuting Area categories 1.0 and 1.1; all other areas were classified as rural.Propensity score-matching analysis was used to address differences in baseline characteristics and compare mortality between rural and urban veterans with CRC.An additional propensity score-matching analysis focused on CRC among veterans aged 45 years.Results: Of 2,460,727 individuals, there were 19,422 urban and 10,797 rural veterans with CRC (fiscal years 2016-2021).In rural areas, 83.6% of patients with CRC were White, compared to 67.8% in urban areas.Veterans with CRC in rural areas were also older, more likely to be obese, but had a lower Charlson Comorbidity Index (all P < .05).In the propensity scorematched cohort, baseline demographics and comorbidities were similar between rural and urban CRC patients.Total mortality occurred in 3702 urban veterans (34.3%) and 3763 rural veterans (34.9%) (hazard ratio [HR], 1.01; 95% CI, 0.97-1.06,P = .53).More patients with CRC were aged 45 years in urban areas (n = 391, 2.0%) than in rural areas (n = 160, 1.5%; P = .001),and their mortality was similar in the propensity score-matched group (HR, 0.97; 95% CI, 0.57-1.63).Conclusions: Veterans with CRC in rural or urban areas had similar survival outcomes.The study implies that an integrated health system may help alleviate disparities between rural and urban America.","journal":"Federal Practitioner","year":2025,"id":565512,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.7695,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1469190,"name":"Minh Anh Le","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":31,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:56:28.709936Z","pmid":"40832008","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}