Key Takeaways
- Witness Project® Lung is a five-year research initiative focused on increasing lung cancer screening among eligible African Americans.
- The project received a $3.7 million grant from the National Cancer Institute and runs through June 2031.
- The program uses personal stories from trained community members and guidance from Lay Health Advisors to encourage screening.
- Researchers are working with 22 churches and community organizations across northern New Jersey and the New York City area.
- The research is led by Hackensack Meridian Center for Discovery and Innovation with partners from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
AI generated.
Lung cancer screening can save lives through early detection, but it is underutilized in high-risk groups of people. To address gaps in access and uptake among African Americans, researchers at the Hackensack Meridian Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI), working with partner institutions, have been awarded a federal grant to work with churches and community organizations to gauge how outreach can save lives.
The initiative is called “Witness Project® Lung,” and has started with a new five-year, $3.7 million R01 grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (grant number (1R01CA315494-01)).
The project is co-led by Principal Investigator Lisa Carter-Bawa, Ph.D., MPH, APRN, ANP-C, FAAN, FSBM, director of the Cancer Prevention Precision Control Institute (CPPCI) at the CDI, as well as professor of medicine at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine. A member of Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center Cancer Prevention and Control program, she also serves as Georgetown Lombardi’s deputy associate director of Community Outreach & Engagement (John Theurer Cancer Center at HMH is a part of Georgetown Lombardi). Carter-Bawa leads the initiative alongside co-Principal Investigators Jamie S. Ostroff, Ph.D., of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Lina Jandorf, MS, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
The project aims to bridge a critical gap in preventive care in underserved populations. Among eligible African Americans, the current lung cancer screening rate is under 2 percent, compared to roughly 18 percent nationally among all groups.
Witness Project Lung uses personal testimony from "Witness Role Models," complemented by guided navigation from “Lay Health Advisors” to encourage screening uptake in trusted local settings.
The research team is currently partnering with 22 churches and community-based organizations across northern New Jersey and the New York City area, including the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA).
The five-year project period started this summer runs through June 2031.
“This is a collaborative effort spanning Hackensack Meridian Health, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and Mount Sinai, reinforcing the kind of cross-institutional partnerships that strengthen our collective impact in cancer prevention,” said Carter-Bawa.