IU Health, Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center launch mobile lung cancer screening
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIndiana University Health and the IU Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center are rolling out a new tool to help detect lung cancer.
A 40-foot truck with CT scanner on board launched last week, marking what the health system says is the first mobile lung screening program in the state.
Lung cancer is by far the leading cause of cancer death in the United States, accounting for about 1 in 5 of all cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society.
The truck will focus first on rural areas, the health system said.
“In the rural communities, they’re more likely to get lung cancer, more likely to be diagnosed with advanced stage disease, less likely to have surgery, and they’re more likely to pass away from it,” Dr. Nasser Hanna, IU Health’s lung cancer screening program director, said in an interview with Inside INdiana Business. “Reducing those barriers is absolutely the key, and bringing a mobile program into their communities is really a major part of that.”
Hanna says there are 20 rural communities throughout the state that have been identified as focus areas. Part of the work will include working with care teams in those communities, so if something is found on the scan, individuals can access biopsies or follow-up care.
“The characteristics that define these communities is there is no fixed lung-screening program in their area,” Hanna said. “We studied the map of Indiana, all 92 counties. We did a deep dive.”
IU Health and the IU Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center teamed up for the truck, which is a gift from the Tom and Julie Wood Family Foundation. Tom was a highly successful entrepreneur who owned Tom Wood Automotive Group before he died of lung cancer.
Last year, Julie gave IU $20 million in honor of Tom to establish the Tom and Julie Wood Center for Lung Cancer Research.
“I can’t make this more clear: if you are eligible for lung screening, you will not pay anything out of pocket,” Hanna said. “If you’re on Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act or private insurance, you will not have a co-pay…there should not be a financial barrier to this.”
Lung cancer is the second-most common cancer in both men and women, and Hanna says only 15% of people who are eligible for lung screening actually get one.
“He was joyful and lived every minute he was alive,” Elyse Turula told Inside INdiana Business about her late husband, Harry. “He had a discomfort that he pursued, and even with his [smoking] history, no one directed us toward a scan.”
By the time Harry did get a CT scan, his cancer was stage 4, and he died less than two years after being diagnosed. Elyse now volunteers with End Lung Cancer Now and hopes the truck inspires people to think about getting a scan.
Annual lung cancer screenings are recommended for adults ages 50 to 80 with a smoking history of at least 20 pack-years and who smoke now or quit within the past 15 years. A pack-year describes how many cigarettes a person has smoked in their lifetime at 20 cigarettes per pack.
“I’m thinking [of] the stories that this vehicle is going to hear, the people who say, oh my gosh, I had no idea, or caught it at stage one, and the hugs and the tears and the relief and the scariness and yet, oh, we caught it early,” she said. “There’s no prep involved. You can do it spur of the moment. You don’t have to have fasted; you don’t have to do anything…just think, what do I have to lose? It’s going to take a few minutes.”
IU Health says the mobile unit will provide approximately 2,000 scans this year.