Hackensack Meridian Health Expands Lung Cancer Screenings in New Jersey through Critical Grant from Genentech

The team plans to get early detection, and treatment, to those who are normally overlooked

A Hackensack Meridian Health researcher and her team will partner with community groups to increase lung-cancer screening in two counties - and potentially save lives - among underserved populations.

The two-year, $750,000 Genentech Health Equity Innovation Grant was awarded to Lisa Carter-Bawa, Ph.D., MPH, APRN, ANP-C, FAAN, the director of the Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI)’s Cancer Prevention Precision Control Institute (CPPCI) and her team, in partnership with Greater Bergen Community Action (GBCA).

The partnership between Hackensack Meridian Health and GBCA is called Community-2-Care+Environment: Lung, or C2C+E. It will result in hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of at-risk patients being screened for lung cancer in Bergen and Passaic counties. Many of these patients will be underserved and from minority groups, particularly African-Americans and Latinos.

“We are excited that our proposal was selected,” said Dr. Carter-Bawa, who is also the director of the John Theurer Cancer Center’s Cancer Community Outreach and Engagement office, as well as Deputy Associate Director | Community Outreach & Engagement for the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. “We will do targeted outreach, social determinant of health assessments and navigation to resources, and 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.”

The process will involve adding a new community health worker and patient navigator, who will meet with prospective patients at the GBCA and out in the community. These community specialists will review the social determinants of health for the respective patients with them. The factors will include finances, housing stability, transportation needs, food insecurity, stress, social connections and tobacco use. The community health worker will then connect each individual to a patient navigator who will help determine next steps or future assessments.

Also involved will be second- and third- year medical students from the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine’s Human Dimension course, who will be embedded within the activities of performing health home assessments, education, and also about mitigation of possible environmental risks.

The main goal: to get full screening for the disease for those most at-risk.

But the goals extend even further, with establishing networks in the community to better provide health care access to those who are contacted through the process.

“This is further innovative work from the CPPCI which will make actionable change out in the community, which is what the CDI is always aiming for,” said David Perlin, Ph.D., the chief scientific officer and executive vice president of the CDI.