The Fetter Health Care Network’s Charleston Health Center is located only blocks from MUSC Hollings Cancer Center – and yet it is a world away, said Marvella Ford, Ph.D., associate director of Population Sciences and Cancer Disparities and director of Community Outreach and Engagement at Hollings.

She hopes to bring the two organizations closer together through a grant that will help patients at Fetter to access lifesaving lung cancer screenings at MUSC Health.

“I’m so excited about this grant,” she said. “Typically, many patients access MUSC’s services through the Emergency Department. Overcoming fear, mistrust, transportation issues, financial barriers, copay issues – we’ll be working on all of those by providing patient navigation to successfully guide people from Fetter through the MUSC system and back to their primary care providers at Fetter.”

Hollings is one of three cancer centers working on this $3 million grant from Stand Up 2 Cancer, which seeks to improve screening rates and cancer outcomes in medically underserved communities. Massey Cancer Center at Virginia Commonwealth University and Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are also part of the grant.

The grant merges the expertise of researchers like Ford and Gerard Silvestri, M.D., a lung cancer pulmonologist, with the practical experience of Fetter staff and doctors, like Kevin Patel, M.D. It also involves the personal experiences of people who have lived through lung cancer diagnoses – people like Diane Juitt, who has agreed to serve as a patient advocate for the grant……

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