Lifesaving Lung Screening on Wheels: Roswell Park’s Eddy Program

Candace S. Johnson, Ph.D. 
President and CEO, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center

We started with a significant allocation from New York State, a specially designed low-dose CT scanner, a 43-foot tractor-trailer, and bracing statistics on the low number of eligible people who were getting screened for lung cancer as recommended: only 6%, nationally and statewide.

Fifteen months later, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Centers’ Early Detection Driven to You (Eddy) program has screened more than 1,200 community members at high risk for lung cancer and first responders. It detected at least five lung cancers early enough that those five people can have their lung cancer treated and cured, allowing them to get on with their lives. About 100 other people have been recommended for follow-up of nodules, setting them on the path to early detection and treatment, should these lesions develop into cancer.

The potential positive impact for these individuals, their loved ones, and our whole community from this effective early intervention—the potential for extended life, continued productivity, and dramatically improved quality of life—is stunning to think about.

The National Cancer Plan and our charters as NCI-Designated Cancer Centers challenge us to put our resources to work in new and creative ways to meet the particular needs of people in our communities. Roswell Park had an incredible opportunity to do just that through our Eddy program. Eddy directly advances three of the eight goals of the National Cancer Plan: detect cancers early, eliminate inequities, and engage every person.

As we charge ahead with continued outreach into the communities and populations most affected by lung cancer in western and central New York State—urban neighborhoods, rural communities, and our region’s firefighting forces—we are working now on applying this same model to mobile screening for prostate and breast cancers.

Most important, our community is seeing firsthand the benefit of this evidence-based, proactive intervention. As a man named Cecil told The Buffalo News about early detection of cancer, after he got screened during Eddy’s stop at a church parking lot on Buffalo’s east side: “It can only help, it can’t hurt.”

Read more about other initiatives advancing the goals of the National Cancer Plan in Roswell Park’s Innovation Engine blog series.