Meeting patients where they are
“We are missing many high-risk patients,” said co-first author and second-year medical student Logan Spiegelman. “Cultural competence is paramount. We must meet people where they are and not assume that everyone has the same healthcare literacy. That means providing educational materials in their language, assigning patient navigators to help them access care and raising awareness, even among healthcare providers.”
The study is unique in that it measured patient behavior by linking a bilingual, hybrid traditional-plus-digital advertising campaign to actual screening volume across 31 imaging locations throughout Baptist Health, the first local health system to partner with the American Lung Association for its Saved By the Scan program. Patients were reached through email, social media, newspaper advertising, direct mail, billboards, bus shelters and search advertising.
“The stakes of early detection are the whole argument for screening,” explained senior author Dr. Manmeet Ahluwalia, chief of medical oncology, chief scientific officer and deputy director, Wertheim Cancer Institute, and professor of Oncological Sciences at FIU Medicine. “When lung cancer is caught while still confined to the lung, five-year survival is roughly 60-65%, compared with under 10% once it has spread to distant sites.”
A Sharp Rise in Screenings
The results were striking. The study spanned 2019 through 2023, a period that included a pandemic-related decline in lung cancer screening in 2020. After the Saved by the Scan awareness campaign launched in late 2021, screening rates improved markedly. The number of annual screenings rose from 2,185 in 2021 to 3,285 in 2023, a 50% jump in just two years.
“We are making an impact,” Ahluwalia said. “The awareness gap is real and fixable. One study showed that 74.6% of Hispanic respondents believed that lung cancer could be prevented, but only 44.1% knew screening existed. Once informed, 90.7% wanted screening.” In an area that is 68% Hispanic and where nearly one in five residents is linguistically isolated from care, the need is particularly acute, he added.
Among the outreach methods, email performed best, likely because Baptist-registered patients who already had a documented smoking history were targeted.