A collaborative effort is taking aim at preventing and treating the disease that is taking more lives in Kentucky than any other state.
It’s one thing to be ranked at the top of the charts when we’re talking about football and basketball…but when it comes to cancer cases and mortality rates, being on top isn’t something anyone wants. Unfortunately, that’s where Kentucky falls. “It is overwhelming” says Dr. Jamie Studts, an Associate Professor at UK’s College of Medicine and the Principal Investigator of Kentucky LEADS “We lead the nation in lung cancer incidents as well as mortality. So this is definitely not an area where we want to lead. We want to lead in lung cancer control efforts and lung cancer survivorship efforts and that’s really what this coalition of entities has come together to really develop the programs that help change the face of lung cancer in Kentucky and to really move it in a direction where we can see some positive outcomes.”
Kentucky LEADS, stands for ‘Lung Cancer. Education, Awareness, Detection, Survivorship.” The project is supported by a seven million dollar grant from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation’s Bridging Cancer Care initiative. Dr. Studts says the collaborative will focus on reducing the impact of lung cancer in Kentucky through education, early detection and screening, and patient and caregiver support.