Promoting Positive Health Behaviors: Prevention Programs that Advocate for Early Cancer Screening

Cancer screenings is done to look for cancer in the very early stages, before it spreads and becomes harder to treat and before you would start to see symptoms. Finding cancer early improves the chances of successful treatment. It can save your life.

With that said, the Colorectal Cancer Prevention Campaign program’ s intention is to use its opportunities to positively change this weakness. For example, using the SWOT findings, the conclusion is that the organization identified some weaknesses such as the low education level affecting most of the population, and a lack of understanding which caused a lack of motivation to participate in colorectal cancer screening. With that said, the organization’s intention is to use this opportunity to educate the community on the issue while collaborating with the Department of Health to provide resources to help with this objective. Afterword, the organization intends to use the positive outcomes such as increase early detection and decrease cost for treatment to get the attention of other stakeholders such as insurance companies and policy

Every Woman Matters is a federally-funded program that works on early screening for breast and cervical cancer. Despite the barriers number of screening is significant increases in several of the practices. More strategies need to add to make the program for effective and reach under served and uninsured women.

It is estimated that 39,511 women and 410 men will die of breast cancer this year alone. There will be 229,160 new cases of breast cancer in men and women this year. Breast cancer is the second leading cause of death for women. My great grandmother who I look up to and is the strongest person I know, is a two time Breast cancer survivor and she believes that the organization Susan G Komen has made a huge impact on breast cancer in women. In this speech I want to pay tribute to and recognize all the wonderful things Susan G Komen has done in the research and cure for breast cancer. I will start off by talking about how the organization was founded. Next I will discuss all the great things Susan G Komen has done in the fight against breast

Early detection of breast and cervical cancer reduced the burden of disease in women. The practices of Screening shown reduce the level of mortality and improve quality of life. The Every Woman Matters (EWM)stared in 1992 it is a federally-funded program designed to remove barrier to early screening by providing awareness and make screening more financially accessible to woman who have limited or no health insurance. The eligible women receive pay for office visits with associated clinical breast examination, pelvic examination, Papanicolaou smear test, and lab fees (Backer et al., 2004). Age-appropriate mammography and limited number of diagnostic test is also covered under program. In this paper I will

Mammography, the most effective method for detecting breast cancer at its early stages, can identify malignancies before they can be felt and before symptoms develop. According to the report, from 2000 to 2010, the percentage of women who received a mammogram decline for women from poor and low-income households and for non-Hispanic whites. Furthermore, women from poor, low-income, and middle-income households were less likely to receive a mammogram compared with women from high-income households. In National Healthcare Quality Report (NHQR), among women ages 50-64, uninsured women were less likely to receive a mammogram compared with those with private insurance. The two main factors that serve as a barrier to early detection and cure for breast cancer are socio-economic status (no health insurance/poor access to healthcare) and lack of awareness of the importance of breast cancer screening. The impact of these factors is to the patients and their families is that frequently, breast cancer would be detected at an already advanced stage and the prognosis would be poor, leading to mortality. Cancer diagnosed early before spread has occurred are generally more amenable to treatment and cancers diagnosed late with extensive spread have poor prognoses. In these cases, treatment would just be of palliative in nature. Early detection through screening means early treatment and lower mortality

The American Academy of Family Practice (AAFP), along with seven other family medicine organization were the first to identify “fundamental flaws in the fragmented US healthcare systems and the potential of an integrated, generalist approach” (Martin, 2004). This project went on to identify and propose a new model of practice that has become the foundation of the PCMH model. The proposed model of care includes a patient-centered team approach, elimination of barriers to access care, advanced information systems that include electronic health records, and focus quality outcomes (Martin, 2004). Ultimately, the goal was to transform family medicine to improve healthcare delivery – allowing the PCMH model to flourish and improve primary care practices today. This model of change has occurred with the help of the AAFP’s commitment to research, guidelines, and best practices needed to transform clinics into medical

The Every Woman Matters Program was created as a tactic to fix the current suboptimal levels of cancer screening for women in Nebraska. Researchers found that even though low income level women understood the importance of these types of screening, this specific type of comprehension did very little to push women towards getting screened for these types of cancers (Backer et al., 2005). This is of course understandable: women in low income households are more likely to have a host of other stressors and anxieties regarding day to day existence and the task of making ends meet, than women in high income groups. Daily survival getting to work, taking care of one's kids and other obligations leave these women with little time for much else; while the importance of such screenings might be understood, they're often not a high priority. For example, "African-American and low-income women have lower rates of cancer screening and higher rates of late-stage disease than do their counterparts" (Park et al., 2008). This is simply a trend that many medical professionals are aware of and one which needs to be corrected and which is in part one of the reasons that the Every Woman Matters Program was created. All women should participate in cervical and breast cancer screening regardless of income.

Research data shows that states who have taken the initiative to remove barriers from APRN practice seen an increase in primary care access, and a reduction of medical costs (Florida Association of Nurse Practitioners, 2017). In 2010 the Institute of Medicine (IOM), recommended that in order for ARNP’s to achieve quality output, efficiency, and uniformity of performance, barriers for nurses should be removed, and in 2012 the American Academy of Family Physicians published an article stating there is a need for more primary care providers, and promoting that primary care should be a team effort by physicians and APRN’s, and that both should practice at the full extent of their training, education, and medical skills (Montoya, 2013).

In the video “The future of early cancer detection?” by Jorge Soto, he explained how detecting early stages of cancer is vital because it’ll save lives of many patients and loss of love ones. For example, Soto described how his aunt was suffering from back pains and how the doctor thought it was due to playing tennis and discarded the thoughts that it might be something more. As the aunt kept coming back to the doctor, they did a biopsy. But later on, they found out that Soto’s aunt was in stage three of cancer. After his story, Soto demonstrated a low-cost machine that can detect early signs of cancer. I believed with Soto that doctor won’t treat their patients until their patients start showing symptoms and by that time, their patients’ health

The WISEWOMAN program has been successful in helping financially disadvantaged women access preventative health care and gain awareness about improving one’s health. More than 12,000 women participate in WISEWOMAN across the nation (A Collection of Success, 2006). This program has enhanced the lives and health of thousands of women across the nation, while also providing great opportunities for future women in need of

With cancer requiring colossal amounts of money from society to attempt to treat and cure the disease, it has become an important and relevant social issue in the United States. In 2016 alone, there will be an estimated 1,685,210 cancer diagnoses along with approximately 595,690 deaths in correlation with cancer in the United States (Cancer). Although with the United States having a population around 318 million, only approximately 5% of the population will be affected by cancer. With this only affecting a small portion of the total population, the topic of cancer can create a social issue and source for debate

The white paper provided the guidelines and framework to tackle cancer at every stages and prevention. The health initiative ‘Be Clear on Cancer’ is only the beginning to get people aware of the signs and symptoms of cancer, so that patients are encouraged come in for cancer screening. In the UK, cancer treatment or the referral to a

Although cancer affects the population as a whole, the past has proven women had a disadvantage when seeking cancer treatment. Despite scientific improvements in treating women's cancers, environmental justice continues to cause gaps in seeking adequate cancer treatment. Until women's equality issues improve, women will continue to fall at a disadvantage. We must empower women, through education, to make better, conscious decisions about their own health and cancer treatment. We must continue efforts to better reach women of lower SES, encourage cultural sensitivity within the health profession, and finally, change society's perception of women's body parts.

Despite the difficulty, researchers have reported the benefits of screening. The most recognized benefit of health screening according to Durojaiye, (2009) is it’s effectiveness in reducing morbidity and mortality from disease by detecting it before symptoms occur. A report in 2006, by the Advisory Committee on Breast Cancer Screening, shows that screening saves 1,400 lives a year in England. In Australia, The age-standardized breast cancer mortality rate in women of all ages declined significantly from 28 per 100,000 women in 1996 to 24 per 100,000 in 2005. Mortality from breast cancer among women aged 50-69 was reported to have declined from 62 deaths per 100,000 in 1996 to 52 deaths per 100,000 in 2005 (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2008) . Evidence also suggests that a reduction in death rates of around 95% is possible in the long-term with cervical cancer screening. The screening of pregnant women to identify and intervene early with risks to their health and that of their babies are associated with improved health status among high-risk populations (Durojaiye, 2009). The idea of screening therefore is to prevent, not to cure. Pope (1992), stats that screening is the second best option, but one which