A Two-Way Street: Outreach to the Community and Access to Lombardi

It would be easy to assume that Lombardi's cancer education and community outreach programs would be a one-way street - faculty and staff reaching out to the greater Washington D.C. community.

However, that is not how Lombardi defines it. Under the leadership of Jeanne Mandelblatt, MD, MPH, Associate Director for Cancer Prevention and Control, and Robert Warren, MD, Director of Clinical Affairs, Lombardi builds partnerships with community organizations and agencies that already serve those communities. However, they also may bear the greatest burden of cancer and may have the fewest resources to reduce its impact.

In addition to going out and meeting with the community in their own backyard, Lombardi is finding new and innovative ways to assist community members to access Lombardi research and service programs. In many medically under-served communities, seeking preventive or treatment services at a prestigious health care facility may seem impossible. However, Lombardi is facilitating access to care at Lombardi and access to Lombardi cancer prevention, early detection and treatment research trials.

Among the Lombardi outreach programs that serve this function are:

Cancer Screening and Education. Offered throughout the year, Lombardi sponsors a variety of prostate and breast cancer screening programs. Under the leadership of Kathyrn Taylor, Ph.D., and funded by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Lombardi has been working in partnership with the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of the District of Columbia for the past year to determine the best approach to educate African American men about the pros and cons of prostate cancer screening.
SHARE Health Project. The Self-Help And Resource Exchange Health Project is a partnership between Lombardi, Washington Hospital Center and SHARE-D.C., a non-profit food and community service program. SHARE provides access to high-quality food at low cost to 12,000 to 15,000 D.C. regional families every month who purchase food through their membership in over 300 SHARE Host Organizations (e.g., churches, tenants associations). Two hours of volunteer service and $14 cash or food stamps allows SHARE participants to purchase a package of food with a retail value of $30-$35. The SHARE Health Project, under the leadership of Caroline Burnett, RN, ScD, trains SHARE volunteers to become Lay Health Advocates, and partners them with Georgetown University Nursing and other students to promote health and control cancer. For more information about the SHARE Health Project go to: http://www.sharehealth.org
Celebremos la Vida, which translates as "Let's celebrate life." This free screening clinic, supported by the Cancer Research Foundation of America, provides Latin American women, ages 40 and older, access to free breast and cervical cancer screening services. The clinic is open one Saturday a month, in Northern Virginia, and provides bilingual service providers, health educators and volunteers to meet the needs of women whose lack of insurance or citizenship documentation would otherwise represent insurmountable barriers to these life-saving services. In addition to providing free screening services, Lombardi works with GUMC's Radiology, Surgery and Hematology/Oncology clinical programs to provide free care for women needing diagnostic follow-up and treatment.
The Latin American Cancer Research Coalition (LACRC). As part of a recently funded NCI cooperative agreement, Elmer Huerta, Ph.D. (Principal Investigator, Washington Hospital Center) and Dr. Jeanne Mandelblatt (Research Director) are partnering with the Georgetown University Schools of Nursing, Medicine and Business, five community-based primary care clinics serving D.C. area Latin Americans, ACS, and the NCI Cancer Information Service to:
1. promote cancer prevention and control awareness and behavior change, and
2. promote participation in cancer clinical trials among the rapidly growing and unique Central and South American immigrant population of greater D.C.

The overall goal of the LACRC is to pair culturally appropriate social marketing approaches to promote health and prevent cancer among Latin Americans. It will focus on primary care clinic-based interventions that reinforce these marketing approaches, and integrate cancer prevention and control into the every day operations of these extremely busy clinics.