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Making cancer survivors of the uninsured

By Colleen Kiphart
Illustration by Danette Pratt

A few weeks before Anne succumbed to breast cancer, she implored Trace to tell her story. According to Trace, Anne’s tragedy is a common one, but in Southeastern Ohio at least, she says, “it doesn’t have to be.”

Trace and her colleagues at OU-COM offer free and reduced-cost mammograms, ultrasounds, biopsies and other diagnostic tests for both breast and cervical cancer to uninsured and underinsured women at high risk, including women over the age of 50 and those with previous breast abnormalities and/or a family history of cancer.

The breast and cervical cancer screenings are provided through CHP’s Healthy Adult Program and funded by both the Columbus affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the Ohio Breast and Cervical Cancer Project (BCCP). This year Komen awarded BCCP $57,614, for a total of $543,096 since 2001.

“When an uninsured patient is diagnosed with cancer, the BCCP refers them to a primary care physician in the state,” Trace explains. “If the women are members of the BCCP before they are diagnosed, (the BCCP) also covers the full cost of treatment.”

The program screened 49,558 women for breast and cervical cancer between March 1994 and March 2006, and 427 women in 2008. “Many return each year, using the mobile unit as their primary ob/gyn,” says Cindy Greenlee, M.S.N., a nurse practitioner with Student Health Services and CHP, who works with the mobile screening unit.

Despite these promising figures, stories like Anne’s persist, underscoring the need to increase awareness of CHP and other services.

Unaware of Anne’s breast lump, Trace, who had known her for years, referred Anne to a local physician when she complained of back and bone pain. Unfortunately that physician, who diagnosed her cancer, was not affiliated with the BCCP. With the diagnosis of advanced breast cancer from a non-BCCP physician, it was too late to qualify for free treatment.

“She would have been a perfect candidate for this service, had we known earlier,” Trace says.

Before she died, Anne expressed her desire to spread the word about OU-COM’s free services and the importance of early detection.

Trace describes Anne as a generous person, fondly remembered and sorely missed by her family and wide circle of friends. “She was always one to help others. This is one way for that to continue, her way of being a friend to those she never met.”

OU-COM’s Community Health Programs regularly cover a 21-county area through both its mobile health van and its Free Clinic on the second floor of Parks Hall in Athens.

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