Rutgers Students Are Saving Lives With Colorectal Cancer Screening Project
Colorectal cancer is the second-most common cause of cancer deaths in the United States
A Rutgers student group has assembled more than 1,600 home test kits to spread a message about the importance of early screening for colorectal cancer – the second-most common cause of cancer deaths in the United States.
Volunteers with the Rutgers Health Service Corps have been meeting every week since last September to put together FIT (fecal immunochemical test) home stool test kits for patients of the Eric B. Chandler Health Center, a community clinic on George Street, which serves low-income New Brunswick residents. The project is designed to make it easy for people to get screened for colorectal cancer in the privacy of their own home.
“Colon cancer is one of the handful of cancers where there’s good data that screening saves lives," says Ethan Halm, vice chancellor for population health at Rutgers Health. “You can pick up things in the early, silent phase before people have symptoms, when the cancer is more easily treatable with a high success rate.”
Screening for colorectal cancer – the term for both colon and rectal cancer – has become a national health goal as the rates of diagnosis among people younger than 50 years has increased annually by 2 percent, according to the American Cancer Society. As a result, a federal health task force lowered the age at which adults should be screened for colorectal cancer from 50 to 45 in 2021.
Yet, many people are unaware that the recommended age to start screening for colorectal cancer has changed, says Halm, a professor of medicine at Rutgers Health. To tackle that problem, Halm suggested that the Rutgers Health Service Corps launch a project with the Eric B. Chandler Health Center to increase colorectal cancer screening among low-income adults.
Encouraging more people to get regular screening is also the goal of National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, which was created by President Bill Clinton in 2000 and occurs in March.
Volunteering to Make a Difference
Every Tuesday morning, the Rutgers Institute for Health on Paterson Street becomes a factory of colorectal cancer kits as students gather to put labels with patients’ names and numbers on three-inch long collection tubes. They add a set of bilingual instructions to the packages, which are then mailed to patients between the ages of 45 to 75 who have been recommended to get tested by their doctors at the health center.
If the tests detect microscopic amounts of blood, the patient is instructed to get a colonoscopy to determine if he or she has precancerous polyps or a potential tumor.
Shanik Quirola, a junior from Ecuador, says she was so impressed by the project that she decided to change her major from cell biology and neuroscience to public health. “This project gave me exposure to how I can help the community and make people aware of the screenings and the age that it should start,” she says.
Another volunteer, Lauren Seo, a student in the master of health communication and information program, says she was motivated to join the project after her husband was diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer. “This reminds me of how early detection is important, especially in colon cancer, compared to any other cancer,” she says. Volunteering for three or four hours a week, she adds, is “small and simple work but I realize how important it is.”
Miraj Ahmad, a junior majoring in cell biology and neuroscience and public health, took the FIT kits to an event sponsored by the National Pre-med Chapter of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin in January. Partnering with members of the Alpha Phi Omega National Service Fraternity, the students compiled 100 kits and handed out cards for attendees at the event to send to friends and family members, urging them to get tested for colorectal cancer.
“A lot of them got to write these cards and send them out to their friends and tell them, ‘Hey, we really think you should get screening and you don’t have to go get a colonoscopy,’ ” Ahmad says. “You can simply do a FIT kit at home.”
Expanding the Project
Studies of home screening kits in other communities show that between 15 and 35 percent of people who are not up-to-date with testing will actually complete them, says Halm. While that may seem low, he says that it often exceeds the rate of people who complete a colonoscopy when offered. “In the colon cancer screening world, the best test is the test that gets done,” he says.
While the operation has so far focused on the Eric B. Chandler Health Center, it may expand to other health centers on Rutgers’ Newark and Camden campuses, says John Hemphill, the program manager and director of the Rutgers Health Services Corps. Hemphill says he hopes the expansion will start with a pilot project on the Newark campus by this summer.
“We really want to turn this into a formalized model or structure that helps increase colon cancer screening rates for people in different communities,” he says.
