Community Outreach Summary
The growth of the Oncology program at Montefiore St. Luke’s Cornwall remains a key area of focus for our community hospital. Through continued partnership with the Montefiore Health System, we have worked to not only expand the volume of community events, educational lectures, screenings and prevention education but also our geographic areas served.
We have implemented new processes to best track those engaging with us at community education and screenings events to help gauge the success and actual number of people reached during our outreach efforts. Last year, we also began logging the actual number of one on one discussions that occur in addition to general attendance at our community events, often involving large groups. This was a helpful tool to measure of the 200 plus attendees that were present at a given event, how many did we actually engage with on prevention, screening and outreach information.
In 2018 alone, we reached more than 1,100 people on an individual basis, through a combination of support groups, community education and prevention information, screenings and pod casts.
The MSLC Team remains committed to Cancer Screening events as an important part of our outreach initiatives. 2018 areas of focus for cancer screenings included Breast, Prostate and Lung. In partnership with our Thoracic Surgeons, MSLC also launched the early Lung Screening program in 2016, and this program continues to grow and evolve.
In addition to community events offered by MSLC, the Oncology team also participated in a great deal of events put on by on our community partners. We partnered with the American Cancer Society, Miles of Hope organization, and many others to promote our programs and services throughout the year.
MSLC is also working to further expand the geographic area of both educational offerings and support groups. This year we found that support group attendance continues to fluctuate, not quite reaching the volume of patients, caregivers and community members that our team is actually treating. We will be alternating the location of our continuous support groups including St. Luke’s Survivors, the Breast Cancer Support Group, Shared Stitches, among several others, throughout our primary and secondary service areas.
We continue to evaluate and enhance our efforts in all areas of community education, screening and prevention efforts to best reach the community MSLC serves.
-K Dabroski, Community Outreach Coordinator