Share

Provide Funding to Iowa's BCCEDP /Colorectal Cancer Program

Provide adequate funding for the Iowa Care For Yourself and Comprehensive Cancer Control Programs.

 

ACS urges the State Legislature to appropriate state funding and expand eligibility for the Iowa Care for Yourself Program. Too few Iowans are getting vital cancer screenings that could save their lives and reduce health care costs because they are uninsured or have insurance that is inadequate. This important program provides lifesaving breast, cervical and colon cancer screening and treatment services to low-income, uninsured Iowans statewide. The Society will fight to protect funding for these screening programs and for the Iowa Cancer Consortium.

 

 

Improve Access to Cancer Screening Tools

Breast, cervical, and colon cancers are highly curable if found early through reliable screening tests. The problem is not enough Iowans are getting screened. Lack of health insurance coverage for screening tests is one barrier to early detection of cancer. A state investment in the breast & cervical cancer screening program (now almost totally funded by federal and private money) and expansion of the colon cancer screening pilot programs would help to provide lifesaving cancer screenings that would otherwise be unavailable to the underinsured.

  • Only one in five women eligible for services under BCCEP is receiving them.
  • Only 66 percent of Iowa women over the age of 40 are getting annual mammograms.
  • Although the state receives a 3:1 federal match for this program, we are putting virtually no state money into it.
  • The colon cancer pilot screening programs, with funding of only $200,000 per year for last year and this year, are reaching hundreds of low-income, un- or under-insured Iowans in areas of the state that have higher-than-normal rates of colon cancer incidence, which is great.
  • Tens of thousands of Iowans need those services.
  • While a colonoscopy is recommended at least every 10 years for everyone age 50 or over, only about half of the Iowans in that age group are getting screened. As Iowans age, the numbers will increase. We want to change that. This will be a multi-year effort, but we need to begin laying the groundwork.


ACS CAN provides this webpage for the convenience of the American Cancer Society.
Unless specifically noted otherwise, the Society, and not ACS CAN, is conducting the activities described on this page.