This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Third annual SCOPY awards honor colon cancer prevention, outreach efforts
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
ORLANDO — The American College of Gastroenterology revealed the winners of the 2017 SCOPY Awards at the World Congress of Gastroenterology at ACG 2017.
The third annual SCOPYs (Service Award for Colorectal Cancer Outreach, Prevention and YearRound Excellence) were awarded to 21 ACG members nominated for their achievements in community engagement, education and awareness initiatives for preventing colorectal cancer.
This contest “is one of our best ways to reach out to patients and make them aware of colon cancer, and the fact is, usually it’s done with a great deal of fun and creativity, and ... the inventiveness of this group is just spectacular,” SCOPY Awards judge Patricia L. Raymond, MD, FACG, of the ACG Public Relations Committee and Eastern Virginia Medical School, told Healio Gastroenterology and Liver Disease. She noted that the SCOPYs have recognized a wide variety of efforts, ranging from poems, songs and comedy skits, to a live-stream of a gastroenterologist’s own colonoscopy on the internet, and multifactorial community awareness programs. “There are so many ways to do this,” she said.
Some of this year’s winners — chosen by Raymond and fellow judges Jordan Karlitz, MD, and Eugenia Tsai, MD, both from Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans — included:
- Pooja Singhal, MD, and the Saint Anthony Gastroenterology Department in Oklahoma City, Okla., for a community engagement event called “Colon Polypalooza”;
- University of California, Irvine, for a community outreach initiative using Facebook Live Video;
- Matthew Paul Mewhorter, a stage-two colon cancer survivor who tells his and other survivors’ stories through his comic, Cancer Owl;
- University of Virginia’s Department of Gastroenterology, for a coordinated community health intervention that reached 23,000 people at an education event and sent more than 10,000 postcards to encourage patients aged older than 40 to schedule screening;
- Jinendra Satiya, MD, and the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine Palm Beach Regional GME Consortium, Internal Medicine Residency Program, Atlantis, Fla., for an office-based, epidemiological approach to increase screening rates;
- Thomas Jefferson University Hospital’s Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, in Philadelphia, and Whitfield L. Knapple, MD, FACG, chair of the ACG National Affairs Committee, ACG Board of Governors, of Arkansas Gastroenterology in North Little Rock, who tied for the “Best in Blue” award for lighting up local landmarks for CRC awareness; and
- Fight Colorectal Cancer, the National Colorectal Cancer Roundtable, the American Cancer Society and Katie Couric, for a live-streamed awareness event in New York City, which Healio Gastroenterology and Liver Disease reported on earlier this year.
At the SCOPY Awards Reception, the recipient of the award for Best Community Service Delivery and Comprehensive Community Education Initiative, Darrell M. Gray, II, MD, MPH, discussed the accomplishments of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and the Provider and Community Engagement (PACE) Program for Health Equity in Colorectal Cancer Prevention, which aim to raise CRC awareness and reduce disparities in CRC prevention.
“Ohio is one of three hot spots within the U.S. that has one of the highest CRC death rates, and when we look at our patients, those from rural and urban communities, we see disparities ... based on socioeconomic status, insurance, race and ethnicity,” he said during his presentation. “If we are to address these disparities, we must do so with health equity in mind ... we will have to tailor our interventions to those who are without, or with limited resources, insurance, income, knowledge, education, and help ... provide them with the resources that they need.”
Gray emphasized the importance of incorporating the basic tenets of community engagement and the patient-provider relationship in his groups outreach efforts, which include “meaningful partnerships, encouraging mutual responsibility, and engaging in shared decision making.”
With these values in mind, he and his group launched the PACE program in March 2015, and have led several community education initiatives. They have educated more than 500 adults via inflatable colon tours, provided nutrition education via “Walk With a Doc Grocery Store Tours,” provided CME via the Cancer Disparities Conference, and hosted an annual CRC phone bank and web chat on a local TV station, which reached more than 57,000 households in central Ohio. The group has also provided more than 120 low-to-no-cost colonoscopies during their March Screening Saturdays events.
“We’ve detected one cancer, we’ve removed hundreds of polyps, and in our first year our adenoma detection rate was 65%, and we’ve continued to hold a standard that’s above our national benchmarks,” Gray said.
Given the goal of an 80% screening rate by 2018 set by the National Colorectal Cancer Round Table, “we need all hands on deck and we have no time to waste,” he concluded.
The importance of the SCOPY awards is to ensure that individuals like Gray, who are working to fight CRC in their own communities, “know that they are being heard,” Raymond told Healio Gastroenterology and Liver Disease. Additionally, highlighting these winners’ efforts can serve as “a guide book” for others to find inspiration for their own efforts to promote CRC awareness and prevention in their own communities. – by Adam Leitenberger
References:
Third Annual SCOPY (Service Award for Colorectal Cancer Outreach, Prevention and YearRound Excellence) Awards. Presented at: World Congress of Gastroenterology at American College of Gastroenterology Annual Scientific Meeting; Oct. 13-18, 2017; Orlando, FL.