Health care workers with Ohio State University have begun driving a mobile lung cancer screening unit across the state.
It’s meant to expand early detection efforts in underserved parts of Ohio, like Perry, Morgan, Noble and Monroe counties.
“We still have very limited services in these counties,” said Darla Fickle, a program director with the university’s Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Without a hospital, you don't have access to [a low-dose CT scan] unless you bring it on a mobile unit, and that's what we're trying to do.”
The effort is especially important in rural Ohio, she said, because smoking rates there tend to be higher than in urban and suburban parts of the state.
“And if you look at the lung cancer incident rates and mortality rates, they're usually the top in every county that we're going to in Appalachia,” she said.
The Meigs County example
In southeast Ohio’s Meigs County, for example, lung and bronchus cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality, accounting for nearly 30% of all cancer deaths.
But getting screened for lung cancer there isn’t easy.
“We are in a health professional shortage area. Our only hospital closed back in 2000,” said Courtney Midkiff, the Meigs County Health Department Administrator. “We have some regional health systems that do offer lung screening, but for most Meigs County residents, they're probably at least 45 minutes to an hour from their home to get to.”
She’s hopeful Ohio State’s mobile unit will increase access to the preventive health care service and potentially save lives in the process.
“We know that there's people that need to be screened and this is just going to help with breaking down those health disparities,” she said.
How mobile units help
The lung cancer screening unit is just the latest mobile health unit to hit the streets in Meigs County.
“We also have OhioHealth that has a mobile mammography unit,” Midkiff said. “So there is no reason in Meigs County for a lady not to have a mammogram.”
Other organizations run mobile units to provide pediatric care, OB-GYN services and vaccines. Soon, another one will offer treatment for people dealing with substance use disorders.
“So it’s growing,” Midkiff said. “I would love to see us have some mobile dental services because we have one dentist for 4,500 residents here.”
Darla Fickle thinks the increase is likely to continue.
“It's very difficult for these organizations to have hospitals in their county because they can't sustain them…based on the number of patients they have to get,” she said. “And so I think that you're going to see more and more of this from different types of organizations — not just not just Ohio State and the James — but other other health entities and hospital systems having more mobile units out there.”
The model makes a lot of sense in rural Ohio, she said.
“I think mobile units are really the way to go.”
