Iowa's Colorectal Cancer Dialogue

Last Friday, I went to Iowa's first Colorectal Cancer Dialogue, which was organized by the Iowa Cancer Consortium, the American Cancer Society, and the Iowa Get Screened Program. The day-long conference was all about colorectal cancer (CRC) - a type of cancer I didn't realize was as common as it is until I started working for the ICC. This may sound ridiculous, but I didn't even know until recently that one of my grandparents was a CRC survivor. (I found out when I was asking one of my parents about our family medical history; my grandparent had been diagnosed and treated for CRC long before I was born and died when I was in elementary school.)

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related mortality (lung cancer is the leading cause). The fact that it causes so much mortality is especially upsetting considering that its one of the few cancers for which there are screening tests available and if its found early, the chance of 5-year survival after diagnosis is 90%.

Much of the discussions at the Dialogue focused on how to increase CRC screening rates, either by targeting physicians and other health care providers to recommend screening or by educating adults about the various screening options/providing the tests themselves. When people think of CRC screening, they usually only think of colonoscopy, but there are actually three different kinds of screening tests that have been shown to be effective for average-risk adults aged 50 to 75, including getting an annual fecal immunochemical test (FIT). The speakers included Dr. Durado Brooks (national director of the CRC and prostate cancer division of the American Cancer Society), the University's own Dr. Charles Lynch and Dr. Barcey Levy, and ACS's Lorrie Graaf. Many materials from the Dialogue, including presentations, are available to everyone on the ICC website.

Here are some random public health articles you might be interested in:

Conservatives Step Up Attacks On Public Funding For Birth Control - Julie Rovner
Rep. Steve King from Iowa apparently doesn't realize that women can be on birth control and still have children some other time in their lives.

Time to Revive Home Ec -Helen Zoe Viet
"Too many Americans simply don’t know how to cook. Our diets, consisting of highly processed foods made cheaply outside the home thanks to subsidized corn and soy, have contributed to an enormous health crisis."

Med Schools Fall Short on LGBT Education - Eliza Barclay

And here's a picture of my cat, Alley, sitting on my lap while I tried to work on a literature review paper yesterday: