Pictured above are community members receiving health education information.
Mary Douglas-Brown is always looking for ways to help fellow members of her church learn how to take charge of their health. The 70-year-old member of Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church in Northeast Washington, D.C., is a breast cancer survivor and knows firsthand that education and early detection are key to preventing and surviving many diseases.
“We just need to be more aware of what’s happening with our bodies,” says the Hyattsville resident. “When we know better, we do better.”
That’s why several times a year, she hosts health education events at her church, enlisting a number of community resources to spread the word about important health and lifestyle topics.
One of those resources she calls is Lynel McFadden, one of our community navigators at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. McFadden is one of three community navigators serving as the boots on the ground for MedStar Health’s Colorectal Cancer Prevention in the Neighborhood program. She gives presentations, conducts classes, and informs residents about the risks of colorectal cancer.
“The overall goal is to save lives by educating and dispelling myths about colorectal cancer,” says McFadden, a breast cancer survivor who uses her own story as an example of the importance of early detection.
Launched in 2016, the program deploys members of the community, like McFadden, to promote and facilitate colorectal cancer screening to the area’s most underserved communities.
Through events at churches, nursing homes, restaurants, and community centers, the team provides educational presentations, videos, and materials. They also give residents free take-home colorectal screening kits to complete at home and mail in for testing.
McFadden always follows up within a week to ask residents if they’ve sent in their kit, and to encourage them to do so if they haven’t. She says sometimes it takes two or three calls before they finally return their kits for testing, but she uses each conversation as an opportunity to establish a relationship of trust. “It’s important that they know we’re not just breezing into their community, giving out these kits, and breezing out. I let them know I’m here because I care.”
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Last year, the program distributed 675 home screening kits, with 254 residents completing and mailing in their kits for testing. Of those mailed kits, 118 residents were referred for a colonoscopy based on initial findings. It’s this type of early detection that can help prevent many cases of colorectal cancer by finding and removing certain types of polyps before they to turn into cancer, says Beverly Lyles, senior philanthropy officer at MedStar Washington Hospital Center.
“It’s our hope that this kind of screening becomes routine behavior,” she says. “We want to help shift the way many people think about their health, especially those in our most vulnerable communities.”
One recent event that helped shift the way people think about their health was the death of actor Chadwick Boseman. The 43-year-old actor died from colon cancer in 2020, putting the disease at the forefront of many minds and encouraging them to ask questions, McFadden says.
“His death made folks see that this can happen to anyone at any age,” she says. “That’s why we’re doing all we can to prevent it from happening to them.”