Urshila Durani, M.D., M.P.H.

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SUMMARY

The research interests of Urshila Durani, M.D., M.P.H., focus on improving cancer care delivery. Dr. Durani seeks to make cancer care more person-centered by incorporating patient voices into research and implementing evidence-based healthcare delivery interventions that improve the patient experience. She specifically focuses on patients who have lymphoma or are undergoing cellular therapy or bone marrow transplant, and their caregivers. Dr. Durani's research examines issues such as quality of life, financial toxicity, survivor and caregiver needs, and decision-making in cancer.

Focus areas

• Financial toxicity and quality of life in survivors and caregivers after chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy. Dr. Durani aims to understand the spectrum of financial toxicity, quality of life, and cognitive issues that patients and caregivers experience for the two years after CAR-T cell therapy through longitudinal surveys and qualitative individual interviews. She also uses administrative claims data to measure the out-of-pocket costs of patients undergoing CAR-T cell therapy. The Mayo Clinic Values Council and the Kern Health Care Delivery Scholar Program fund this research.
• Making decisions about lymphoma treatment. Using qualitative and quantitative methodology, Dr. Durani seeks to understand how patients and healthcare professionals make decisions about lymphoma treatment and how they work together. She also seeks to understand how they incorporate effectiveness, toxicity, quality of life and the late effects of treatment into their decision-making.
• Late effects of lymphoma treatment. Dr. Durani uses survey data to understand the late effects — physical, financial, fertility and psychosocial — that patients and their caregivers experience after a lymphoma diagnosis and during treatment.

Significance to patient care

Many issues can significantly affect the likelihood of a patient accessing or completing cancer therapy. These issues include financial toxicity, which is the burden of the cost of medical care, as well as the side effects of treatment and psychosocial concerns. Dr. Durani seeks to understand cancer care and the cancer experience from the perspective of patients. Her research is opening doors to new ideas on how to transform care delivery for these patients in a way that is meaningful to their lives.

Dr. Durani hopes that decreasing financial toxicity can make expensive but lifesaving cancer treatments more accessible. Her work is creating opportunities to imagine personalized medicine that is not just individualized from a genetic or molecular standpoint, but also in terms of patient priorities and values.

Professional highlights

• Kern Health Care Delivery Scholars Program Award, Mayo Clinic Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery, 2021-2024.
• Angela and Anne V. Marinelli Endowed Fellowship, Mayo Clinic, 2020.
• Outstanding Hematology-Oncology Trainee, Mayo Clinic, 2020.
• Tow Tan Humanism in Medicine Award, Mayo Clinic, 2020.
• Outstanding Fellow Award, Minnesota Society of Clinical Oncology, 2018.