I-LEARN: Increasing Lung Cancer Screening Effectiveness and Access through Regional Networks

  • Clinical Transformation,
  • Health Equity
Project Status: In Progress

ILEARN is developing and assessing the effectiveness of selection approaches and implementation strategies to scale and sustain access to lung cancer screening across populations and clinical settings. Findings will help increase effectiveness and access to lung cancer screening and sustainment of LCS programs.

Across the United States, initiation of and adherence to lung cancer screening (LCS) remains low, partly due to challenges in identifying screening-eligible patients and supporting all necessary components of high-quality screening. There is emerging evidence that centralized screening programs can effectively increase LCS uptake and adherence, but feasibility and access vary among settings, and they often do not reach individuals who have not yet been integrated into care. Without addressing the need to identify sustainable and accessible strategies that link community and primary care clinics with centralized programs, barriers to LCS access and adherence will persist.

To address this issue, PC3I Director Katharine Rendle, PhD, MSW, MPH and PC3I Faculty Anil Vachani, MD, MSCE are leading a study with collaborators at Geisinger and NYU to develop and assess effectiveness of selection approaches and tailoring of implementation strategies to scale and sustain access to LCS across populations and clinical settings. The study team will first engage clinics across over 60 community and primary care clinics across Pennsylvania and New York City to scale LCS, identify common LCS barriers, and collaboratively use results to identify potential implementation strategies. In the second phase of the research, the team will then conduct a large-scale pragmatic trial with over 60-sites to evaluate the effectiveness, sustainability, and reach of the selected strategies across groups. By combining centralized LCS programs with trusted messengers at community and primary care clinics, this study will help advance the goal of reducing lung cancer mortality through early detection across all populations.

This study has the potential to increase effectiveness and access to lung cancer screening (LCS), as well as increase the scale and sustainment of LCS programs. Additionally, this study will help provide empirical evidence on the pros and cons of using different selection and tailoring approaches to increase implementation and sustainment of evidence-based practices across the field of implementation science.

National Cancer Institute

Geisinger Health System, New York University

Project Leads

  • Katharine Rendle

    PhD, MSW, MPH

    Director, Penn Center for Cancer Care Innovation

  • Anil Vachani

    MD, MS

    Co-Director of Lung Cancer Screening and Associate Professor of Medicine

Project Team

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