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East Palo Alto will be the first city in the country to take part in a program focused on early cancer detection and disease screenings in a partnership with a mobile screenings company and the American Cancer Society.
The work of the company Life Saving Images targets mid-sized, underserved urban and rural U.S. communities of 5,000 to 40,000 residents. Comparative data will be collected for a study on the benefits of early detection of five cancers — breast, lung, colon, prostate and skin — plus heart disease and diabetes, said Holly Bachman, company vice president of marketing and strategic partnerships. The project aims to ultimately reduce mortality rates from the diseases, curb health disparities and improve people’s overall health.
The first round of health screenings will take place Wednesday, Nov. 6, through Saturday, Nov. 9, from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. at the Community Church of East Palo Alto parking lot located at 2201 University Ave., East Palo Alto.
There is no cost for the screenings and no one will be turned away, Bachman said.
The East Palo Alto screenings will take place every quarter for five years. This week’s screenings will be for breast cancer and diabetes only. The program will screen for heart disease and lung cancer in February.
Bachman, who met East Palo Alto City Councilman Larry Moody last year at the annual League of Cities conference, said the city was among the first places that came to her mind when the project launched due to its size and demographics. The city has elevated rates of asthma and diabetes, Moody had told her.
Life Saving Images uses smartphone software and a mobile imaging clinic to provide residents with screenings and health educational materials. Residents who are found to need additional assessment or treatment will be referred to physicians and hospitals within the company’s network, Bachman noted.
Bachman said she and Jim Drury, Life Saving Images CEO and founder, were both motivated by personal circumstances to start the company and to reach out to underserved communities with early detection.
“We both come from Minnesota. Jim’s father died of a heart attack when (Jim) was 9 years old, and he had a sister with breast cancer. I was adopted from South Korea, and my adopted father just celebrated 18 years with a heart transplant. Being proactive about my health is critical for me because I don’t know my background since I was adopted,” she said.
Taking the early screenings helped them both rule out heart disease, she said, something that concerned Drury in particular because of his father’s early death, she said. For both, health is a social-equity issue.
“Residents of mid-size or rural communities such as the city of East Palo Alto should not have higher mortality because of where they live,” Drury said. “Nor should men and women in inner cities. Life Saving Images (LSI) has proven (that) screening rates rise significantly when on-site screening and education is provided and it only takes 10 minutes or less to screen. We can help cities provide convenient screening without any increase in per-patient-screening cost.”
The partnership will kick off with a blue-ribbon cutting at the church site on Nov. 6 from 1-3 p.m. The launch event will include remarks from Mayor Lisa Gauthier, council members, leaders and key stakeholders in the greater East Palo Alto community.
“It is an honor to team up with Life Saving Images for the progressive health of our community,”
Pastor Ervin Wilson of the Community Church of East Palo Alto said. “It is our responsibility as leaders in the community to unite, to build people up, we can make it a better place for all of us to live and work together.”
The five-year screening program will also take place in Bell, a small southern California city. Life Saving Images and the American Cancer Society plan to launch the screenings in 23 California cities in the next year. Nationwide, there are 10,000 mid-sized cities, Bachman said.