From Barriers to Breakthroughs: Rural Health Strategies for Improving Cancer Screening

Rural communities continue to face significant barriers to timely cancer screening and follow-up care, including geographic isolation, workforce shortages, transportation challenges, fragmented referral systems, and limited access to specialty services. These barriers contribute to delayed diagnoses and ongoing differences in breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer outcomes.

This six-session Community of Practice (CoP) is designed to help HRSA-supported health centers identify and address workflow inefficiencies, strengthen community partnerships, and implement practical strategies that can be expanded over time to improve cancer screening participation and patient follow-up among rural and populations with lower screening rates.

Through peer learning, expert facilitation, case-based discussions, and action-oriented planning, participants will explore innovative approaches, including Rapid Improvement Events (RIEs), FOCUS-PDSA model quality improvement cycles, mobile outreach models, responsible use of AI-supported patient engagement, and community-driven screening initiatives.

Participants will leave with practical tools, tested strategies, and implementation ideas that can be adapted to their own health center environments.

Goals
By participating in this CoP, participants will:

• Identify operational and workflow barriers impacting cancer screening in rural settings
• Apply rapid-cycle improvement strategies to strengthen screening workflows
• Explore innovative outreach models, including mobile screening and AI-supported engagement
• Strengthen community partnerships that improve access to preventive care
• Learn scalable strategies to sustain and spread successful screening interventions
• Collaborate with peer organizations facing similar rural healthcare challenges