Fighting breast cancer with a phone call
How early intervention is helping Black women fight breast cancer at Parkland
Cancer treatment is tough enough.
Imagine how much tougher it would be if you didn’t know how you could possibly afford it, find transportation to your appointments, or arrange for childcare during your treatments.
Many women in Dallas County don't have to imagine. It’s their reality.
“I remember one woman in particular,” said Maripat Hodges, Cancer Program Manager at Parkland Health. “We remembered thinking ‘wow,’ this patient’s going to have a lot of barriers getting to appointments and getting her treatment.”
But Hodges and team only knew what this new patient was up against because a nurse navigator proactively reached out with a simple questionnaire about her circumstances. Questions such as ‘Do you have coverage?’, ‘Would you like to speak to a financial counselor?’, ‘Did you realize your coverage is expiring?’, ‘Do you need transportation or childcare?’ all made up unexpected music to the patient’s ears.
“With that connection at the very beginning, our nurse navigator was able to help that patient through,” Hodges recalled. “I actually talked to this patient and her husband, and she was just so thankful to be able to have such an advocate on her side and someone who really understood all the barriers.”
According to the 2022 Dallas County Community Health Needs Assessment, Black women have the highest probability of developing breast cancer and are 40% more likely to die from it than white, non-Hispanic women in Dallas County. To help close that gap, Parkland recently partnered with The American Society of Clinical Oncology and Susan G. Komen to increase early screening for financial coverage for Black breast cancer patients, and early screening for social determinants of health, ultimately improving their access to care.
By improving processes and workflows, Parkland has improved the social determinants of health screening of Black breast cancer patients from 3% to 86%.
“Not only are we able to screen more patients, but then by screening these patients, we actually are able to identify what’s going on with them,” Hodges added. “So it’s a success to be able to say this is really a patient-driven thing. Once we know what they need, we can then figure out how to connect our patients with financial counselors and the other resources they may need.”
To hear the Susan G. Komen “Real Pink” podcast episode on this initiative, visit realpink.komen.org/connecting-black-cancer-patients-to-financial-coverage.
For more information about Parkland services, visit www.parklandhealth.org.
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