Recorded presentation

Susan M Farner, PhD¹, Lauren Nyhan², and Kathy Bartoli². (1) Community Health Department, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 120 Huff Hall, 1206 S Fourth Street, Champaign, IL 61820, 217-333-6876, smfarner@yahoo.com, (2) Community Health, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 120 Huff Hall, 1206 S. Fourth St., Champaign, IL 61820

Increasing health disparities among populations are compelling public health departments across the country to develop programs to provide improved access to medical care. The Illinois Breast and Cervical Cancer Program (IBCCP) aims to enroll income qualified, uninsured women ages 35-64 in the program for free screenings. Historically this has been a difficult population to engage in programs. By developing a detailed, in-depth community contact base, the IBCCP in Champaign-Urbana seeks to increase enrollment of the target population into the state-wide program. Upon our arrival to the understaffed program six months ago, we adapted several approaches to the existing procedures in order to improve outreach and increase enrollment. We worked to enhance poster readability and distribute a higher volume of flyers to low-yield areas. Additionally, we made personal contact with staff at local social organizations in order to increase awareness of the program and develop cooperation among services. Most importantly, we were able to decrease the time between the initial contact with patients and the follow up for enrollment by providing consistent and timely reminders. The preliminary results of our efforts indicate that the number of enrollees is increased from the last fiscal year. Furthermore, it appears that the more proximate the follow-up contact is to initial interest, the higher our success rate of enrollment.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe procedures used to engage target population.
• Discuss the problems of enrolling this target population in public health programs.
• Recognize the importance of access to screening programs for this population.

Keywords: Access and Services, Breast Cancer Screening

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.

Recorded presentation