Cancer Screening Connection · September 2026 · Volume 4
Special Edition: Connecting With Health Centers at CHI 2026
National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) Conference CHI26
Partnering to strengthen cancer screening in health centers.
Connecting With Health Centers at CHI 2026: Our Time at NACHC
The Veritas Management Group team attended the 2026 NACHC Community Health Conference (CHI), held August 16–18 in Las Vegas. During the conference, the team connected with health center leaders and partners from across the country and shared information about free training, technical assistance, and resources available to HRSA-funded health centers.
We appreciate everyone who visited the booth, asked questions, and helped make connections around improving cancer screening access, workflows, and patient engagement.
From Conference Insights to Health Center Action: Building a Cancer Screening Program That Can Adapt to Change
At CHI, sessions on scenario planning, data use, patient engagement, and care delivery reinforced an important theme: improvement strategies need to evolve as conditions change. For cancer screening, that means looking beyond one intervention and building processes that are responsive to staffing, patient needs, referral capacity, technology, and other operational factors.
Several sessions highlighted approaches that health centers can apply directly to cancer screening improvement, including using available data to identify care gaps and prioritize outreach, tailoring patient engagement strategies to community needs, and creating workflows that clearly define how screening needs are addressed and followed to completion.
Health centers can apply these lessons by focusing on three practical actions:
- Use data to guide action. Regularly review screening data to identify where additional attention may be needed and determine which patients or populations should be prioritized.
- Strengthen the path from outreach to completion. Consider what happens after a patient is identified as due for screening, including outreach, scheduling, referrals, follow-up, and the points where patients may be lost.
- Reassess what is working. Staffing, referral networks, patient response, and available resources may affect whether a strategy continues to be effective. Periodic review helps teams determine where adjustments are needed.
The takeaway is that health centers do not need to start over. Cancer screening improvement can build on existing systems while creating enough flexibility to adjust. A program that routinely uses data, monitors the screening pathway, and adapts its approach is better positioned to turn improvement efforts into sustained screening gains.
Put the CHI Takeaway Into Action
Veritas Management Group offers no-cost technical assistance to HRSA-funded health centers nationwide to strengthen cancer screening efforts. Technical assistance can be tailored to your health center’s needs, including workflows, patient engagement, data use, and follow-up screening support.
Learn more about the Improving Cancer Screening initiative or request technical assistance to see how VMG can support your health center.
Upcoming Learning Opportunities
Community of Practice: Clinical Workflows and AI: Practical Adoption in Health Centers
September 30–November 4, 2026
Wednesday sessions, 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. ET
Going Beyond “Grade C”: An Updated Rubric for Prostate Cancer Screening in the Primary Care Setting
September 29, 2026
3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. ET
New Resource: Technical Assistance One-Pager
Our new one-pager provides a quick overview of how we support health centers with free, customized technical assistance to improve cancer screening. Download it today and share it with your team.