NP leader scores $750,000 grant with hopes of boosting lung cancer screening uptake by the thousands
A noted nurse practitioner and researcher has scored a $750,000 grant, which will help her team to potentially boost lung cancer screening uptake by the thousands.
Lisa Carter-Bawa, PhD, MPH, is a behavioral scientist with nearly 20 years of clinical experience as an NP. She’s part of a group of experts at Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey, which has a plan to partner with community groups to improve awareness around low-dose CT.
Hackensack Meridian is teaming with Greater Bergen Community Action, a nonprofit that helps New Jerseyans fight poverty. Those involved hope the partnership will lead to “hundreds and perhaps thousands” more individuals being screened for lung cancer in Bergen and Passaic counties, with many from underserved communities and minority groups.
“We will do targeted outreach, social determinant of health assessments and navigation to resources,” Carter-Bawa, director of the Cancer Prevention Precision Control Institute, said in a statement. “We are also going to leverage our Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine medical students to conduct healthy home assessments in order to identify homes with elevated radon levels and mitigate the radon in order to decrease lung cancer risk.”
As part of the program, they’ll hire a new community health worker and patient navigator. The two will be tasked with meeting prospective patients in the community in concert with Greater Bergen Community Action. Workers will review factors that may influence patients’ ability to make CT imaging appointments, such as finances, housing stability, transportation, food insecurity and stress. The community worker will then connect them with the navigator to facilitate next steps and potentially set up a low-dose CT exam.
Carter-Bawa and colleagues said their primary goal is to ensure those most at-risk for lung cancer are screened. They’ll also seek to establish a stronger community network to ensure continued access to these resources. Hackensack Meridian operates a total of 18 hospitals and over 500 care sites, employing 7,000 physicians.
The announcement comes after a recent study found that the lung cancer screening population may be at greater risk for harm. Real-world populations are older and sicker than those seen in screening trials, and these comorbidities may reduce the benefits of LCS.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.