Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation awarded eight grants totaling nearly $11.5 million to help make skin and lung cancer screening programs, care and patient support more accessible to underserved populations.

The grants were awarded through the Foundation’s Specialty Care for Vulnerable Populations initiatives and Bridging Cancer Care™ initiatives.

Specialty Care for Vulnerable Populations supports care collaborations among primary care and specialty care providers and patient engagement and social support in order to improve the quality of specialty care services for underserved populations living with lung cancer, skin cancer or HIV. 

Bridging Cancer Care focuses on pilot projects in select southeastern U.S. states with the highest lung cancer burden to advance evidence-based strategies to improve lung cancer screening and assist patients diagnosed with lung cancer access and navigate cancer care and community-based supportive services.

Farmworker Justice received a two-year, $750,000 grant to engage a diverse range of stakeholders to develop a demonstration project in California and Florida to promote community integration of skin cancer services and reduce the impact of skin cancer among farmworkers and their families. Although farmworkers in the U.S. are exposed to living and working conditions that double their risk of developing melanoma and other skin cancers, access to skin cancer prevention, screening and specialty care and services are difficult to obtain. 

“In addition to providing access to skin cancer detection services, resulting in earlier detection of skin cancer and appropriate skin cancer treatment, this project will develop and share effective approaches and strategies to address the particular needs and wishes of farmworker communities and increase the ability to inform and influence national private and public sector decision-makers to better respond to this important public health issue,” says Bruce Goldstein, president, Farmworker Justice, in a news release.

Other grantees include:

The Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC)

The ACCC received a three-year, $4.1 million grant to develop a collaborative approach to improving lung cancer care for Medicaid patients.

Anne Arundel Medical Center

This group received a three-year, $1.25 million grant to replicate and expand the medical center’s successful Rapid Access Chest and Lung Assessment Program, which reduced the time from lung cancer screening to diagnosis from as much as four months for outpatients to an average of 16 days by quickly identifying, engaging and managing patients through an increased centralization of care and a thoracic nurse navigator.

The American Cancer Society (ACS)

The ACS received a three-year, $1.25 million grant to partner with three federally qualified heath centers – Valley Health in Huntington, West Virginia; Christ Community Health Services in Memphis, Tennessee; and a third to be identified – to introduce patient education and clinic-based navigation services to support patients from lung cancer screening through diagnosis. 

The Patient Advocate Foundation

This foundation received a three-year, $1.36 million grant for a program linking West Virginia’s lung cancer patients to case management support, which responds to a decision for the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services to provide coverage for annual low-dose CT lung cancer screening for at-risk patients. The project will identify barriers to care for vulnerable populations and develop strategies to link patients to providers, increase community awareness of lung cancer screening and make available the Lung Cancer CareLine, a system that provides hands-on comprehensive navigation of the health care system to increase access to emerging therapies and treatment. 

The Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention (RLC), in partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

The two groups received a two-year, $604,582 grant to pilot a lung cancer screening and continuum of care access program for patients in underserved and high-risk populations in the Harlem and northern Manhattan sections of New York City.

In addition, two program support grants totaling nearly $2 million were awarded to FSG and The Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School to help translate successful models emerging from Specialty Care for Vulnerable Populations and Bridging Cancer Care into sustainable cancer and specialty care services through alternative funding, payment reform and institutional and public policy change.