Rural Health Network Development Planning Grant Program - Organization name and full address: Ephraim McDowell Health, 217 S 3rd St, Danville, KY 40422 Entity type/type of facility: Hospital Website URL: https://emhealth.org/ Proposed service region: Boyle, Lincoln, Mercer, Casey, Garrard, and Washington Counties in Kentucky. Network name: Central Kentucky Lung Cancer Prevention Initiative Legislative aim(s): 1. Achieving efficiencies in the rural health care system; 2. Expanding access to, coordinating, and improving the quality of basic health care services in Boyle, Lincoln, Mercer, Casey, Garrard, and Washington Counties; and 3. Strengthening the rural health care system as a whole. Focus area(s) based on community need: Increasing access to lung cancer screening, smoking cessation, and prevention education to decrease the lung cancer rate in Central Kentucky. Funding preference: Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) Description: Ephraim McDowell Health (EMH) requests funding from the HRSA Rural Health Network Development Planning (RHNDP) program to establish the Central Kentucky Lung Cancer Prevention Initiative (“the Network”). Planning Network members include EMH, Boyle, Lincoln, Mercer, Casey, Garrard and Washington County Health Departments, Burgin Independent School, and the Casey, Lincoln, Washington, Garrard, and Boyle County School Districts. The Network will develop a strategic, comprehensive plan to increase access to lung cancer screening, smoking cessation, and prevention education to decrease the lung cancer rate in Central Kentucky. The strategic plan will specifically address how to expand access to lung cancer screening throughout hospitals and clinics in the proposed counties in Central Kentucky. The implementation plan will be based on a detailed analysis of the rural health environment and the known social determinants of health (SDoH) that contribute to higher rates of lung cancer. The primary goal of this project is to establish the Network as a formal organization tasked with carrying out key intervention activities based on identified community health needs for the rural population in Boyle, Lincoln, Mercer, Casey, Washington, and Garrard Counties. Additionally, the proposed planning activities will help reveal the primary organizational structures and functions the Network would need in order to operate effectively over the long-term beyond the period of performance and how to expand the Network’s membership. The Network will focus on ways to combine and analyze data from multiple health and social service sources to prepare a strategic plan to address access to affordable health services, environmental factors, and other social determinations of health as they relate to lung cancer incidence. Once complete, the strategic plan will enable EMH and its partners to expand its provision of lung cancer screening, smoking cessation, and prevention education services in both geography and scope to ultimately improve access to health services for underserved individuals in rural communities. The Network’s plan will focus on defining measurable process objectives that will shift community-level outcomes resulting in specific, attainable, and measurable changes in lung cancer rates.
