Dr. Benjamin Spencer
Dr. Benjamin Spencer received formal training in health services and health policy research as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at UCLA from 2001-04. During that time, he also obtained a Masters in Public Health (Epidemiology) from the UCLA School of Public Health. At Columbia , Dr. Spencer has a dual appointment in the Departments of Urology and Epidemiology (Mailman School of Public Health).
His primary research interest is in evaluating quality of care in the treatment of urologic cancers. During his fellowship, in conjunction with his mentors Mark Litwin, a recognized world authority in prostate cancer quality-of-life assessment and a Professor in the UCLA Department of Urology, and Elizabeth McGlynn, a leader in quality-of-care assessment and Director of the Center for Research on Quality in Health Care at RAND Health in Santa Monica, California, he helped to develop the RAND quality-of-care indicators for early-stage prostate cancer. Currently, he is collaborating with researchers at UCLA and the University of Michigan in assessing quality of care for early-stage prostate cancer among a national population-based sample. This project has the following primary goals: 1) To validate the RAND quality indicators 2) To demonstrate the feasibility of collecting national quality-of-care data through local cancer registries 3) To determine whether racial disparities in the quality of care exist which may help explain why African American men suffer age-adjusted mortality rates from prostate cancer that are more than twice that of white men 4) To determine whether access to healthcare services influences quality of care in prostate cancer treatment 5) To determine whether processes of care in the treatment of prostate cancer influence outcomes (e.g. biochemical [PSA] survival) and 6) To propose health policy interventions that can narrow disparities in quality of care.
He is also interested in prostate cancer screening behavior. He is currently analyzing data from the largest PSA testing survey, the California Health Interview Survey. Areas of particular interest from this dataset include whether access to care (e.g. race, language, insurance status) variables influence men's screening behavior and whether men at higher risk for prostate cancer (African American race, positive family history of prostate cancer) are being tested more or less commonly than their normal-risk counterparts.
His research has been funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA. Recently, the Department of Defense Prostate Cancer Research Program awarded him a Physician Research Training Award for five years, 2005-2010, to continue his quality-of-care studies.
