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local area spotlight The Northern Michigan Area Service Center partners for free cancer screenings The Northern Michigan Area Service Center developed a partnership with other local health organizations to start the Annual Women’s Cancer Screening. This project offers cancer education and free clinical breast exams, pelvic exams with Pap smears, and on-site mammograms in a mobile mammography unit (shown below). It is a response to a local need for accessible healthcare in an area where many women have none.  The need was uncovered by a cervical cancer analysis in five Michigan counties with a high incidence of cervical cancer and low cancer screening rates. With this need identified the Northern Michigan Area Service Center, the Alpena Cancer Center, the District Health Department #4, the Women’s Health Center of Alpena, the Thunder Bay Health Clinics, the Alcona Health Centers, the Alpena Regional Medical Center and the Ossineke Eagles chapter all partnered to put on the first screening in 2004. To stretch the free screenings, as many women as possible were channeled into the Breast and Cervical Cancer Control Program (BCCCP) which offers free screenings to women between the ages of 40 and 64 who have no health insurance or a low-coverage plan. Women not eligible for the BCCCP were scheduled for the project’s free screenings. Results from the 2004 screenings showed that of the 188 participants, 4% had never had a Pap smear, 28% had never had a mammogram, and 34% indicated that they didn’t have a routine healthcare provider. The screenings detected breast cancer in three women and cervical cancer in two, all of which may have gone undetected if the free screenings had not been available. In its first year the project won the Michigan Cancer Consortium’s Spirit of Collaboration award. Judy Wienczewski, a social worker at the Alpena Cancer Center, thinks collaboration is essential to the success of the project. "When you’re looking at an illness like this that requires early intervention and prompt treatment for remission and positive outcomes, it’s critically important that you have people on the same page helping one another," she said. Now in its third year, the project took place April 5--May 23 and was met with success. More physicians are supporting it and women are beginning to return year after year. To date, 18% of all women screened have had abnormal mammograms and 12% have had abnormal Pap results. The model of partnership that the Northern Michigan Area Service Center established could be replicated to bring success to other areas. "If more and more health departments and ACS staff could mesh and work as well together as this group does on this project, there would be nothing that they couldn’t accomplish," said Barb Rivenburgh, the BCCCP liaison for Northern Michigan. The Great Lakes Division is proud of the work the Northern Michigan Area Service Center is doing to promote cancer control in their community. The Northern Michigan Area Service Center serves Alcona, Alpena, Antrim, Benzie, Charlevoix, Cheboygan, Crawford, Emmet, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, Leelanau, Manistee, Missaukee, Montmorency, Oscoda, Otsego, Presque Isle, Roscommon, and Wexford counties. | |
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