Lung Cancer Screening - Health Care Disparities: Guest Editor Series

For the CTSNet Guest Editor Series, Lung Cancer Screening - Health Care Disparities, Virginia Litle, MD, brought together video presentations and discussions to broaden our perspectives on disparities regarding the detection and treatment of lung cancer in the United States. Learn more about Dr. Litle by viewing her Featured Profile interview.

There are six contributed videos in this series. Series videos will be published daily starting on October 14, and the video titles are listed below the introductory message from Dr. Litle.

On Friday, October 22, at 9:00 am, Central US Time, CTSNet will host Dr. Litle and some of her contributors for a live discussion to culminate this series.

Watch the recorded webinar here.

Lung Cancer Screening - Health Care Disparities: Introduction

I recently relocated from a safety net hospital, Boston Medical Center, and now I’ve joined another health care system out in Utah (Intermountain Healthcare). I worked at a safety net hospital for over eight years, and while there I learned about the kind of care delivered, which includes taking care of patients who are low-income, uninsured, and part of the most vulnerable population. I’ve also learned that there are delays in cancer screening and barriers to cancer screening for this particular population. Socioeconomic barriers might pose some important challenges in the success of a lung cancer screening program, as well as in mammography or colonoscopy programs. So, when I was running the thoracic program in Boston and working with our pulmonary medicine colleagues, we established the lung screening program and we conducted a study just to see how feasible it was to set up this type of program at that type of hospital with these types of barriers.

We did find that, overall, implementation of this type of lung screening program is feasible and compliance with follow up and interventionable recommendations for the Lung-RADS 4 patients, those with highest risk of cancer and suspicious lesions, was high despite the social challenges. This led me to think more about several of the challenges linked with establishing lung cancer screening programs, and I have reached out to my colleagues at other institutions to see what kind of challenges they were having as well. That is what led me to invite several of our presenters for this series. We have Dr. Hasson up at Dartmouth, who has a particular interest in examining this in the rural population. We also have Dr. Cherie Erkmen of Temple University who also has a particular interest in this within the urban setting. That is what fostered my interest in working with CTSNet on having a series on disparities in lung cancer screening.

Below is the complete list of the contributed videos in the series:

1. Health Care Disparity in Lung Cancer Screening by Kei Suzuki
    
2. Health Care Disparities in Lung Cancer by Azante Griffith
    
3. Lung Cancer Screening: Challenges for Vulnerable Rural Populations by Rian M. Hasson
    
4. Racial Segregation, Structural Racism and Health by Michael Poulson
    
5. Social Determinants of the Lung Cancer Care Continuum by Cherie Erkmen
    
6. Health Care Disparities in the Treatment of Advanced Lung Cancer by Gita Mody