Melissa Franco

Graduate Student Research Funding | 2023–2024 Academic Year

A cancer modeling framework with healthcare system constraints in low-to-middle income countries

Policymakers in resourced-constrained-low-to-middle-income-countries face a unique barrier in implementing breast cancer control policies that reduce the time from symptom presentation to diagnosis and treatment to improve cancer outcomes. Mathematical modeling has increasingly been used to inform cancer control policy decisions; however, most modeling analyses are commonly tailored for more developed healthcare systems. These analyses overlook capacity constraints, which may bias the achievable impact of cancer health interventions and policies. The central component of this work will critically illustrate how ignoring or changing capacity constraints in mathematical models will impact cancer decision-making. To accomplish this, this work will develop a general modeling cancer framework with three capacity constraints along the cancer continuum (e.g., screening, diagnosis, and treatment), and then apply this modeling framework to breast cancer healthcare constraints in Mexico.

Melissa Franco, Department of Health Policy

Melissa Franco is a Ph.D. candidate in Health Policy (Decision Science) who uses multiple disciplines to apply advanced computational models and data-intensive research to tackle healthcare challenges. Her research interests are focused on the intersection of simulation modeling, operations research, and health policy. She these tools and decision analysis to quantify optimal decisions under uncertainty and assess the costs, benefits, and potential harms of health policies in cancer control in low-to-middle-income countries. Before joining Stanford University in 2021, she worked as a project manager with the University of Chicago, focusing on health services and outcome research in chronic disease and mental health. She earned her MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from Washington University in St. Louis and holds a BS in Chemistry from the University of California, Davis.

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