In 2024, The Rural Collaborative (Collaborative) launched a campaign to increase breast cancer screening rates among women 51 to 74 years of age living in rural communities. This is the first ever campaign of its kind for the Collaborative. In total, 19 hospitals are participating, agreeing to both collectively and individually raise breast cancer screening rates by 5% over their rates in 2023. If all hospitals meet their individual goals in 2024, a total of 35,396 patients will be screened, and increase of 1674 from 2023.

On average, 10% of mammograms have abnormal results, and .5% of mammograms end up detecting breast cancer. Given these numbers, this campaign has the potential to detect 8 cases of breast cancer early, giving 8 more women their best possible chance to defeat it!

This is a multi-disciplinary campaign, involving members of the hospital’s quality teams, nurses, radiology, communications and more. The participating Collaborative members have shown their commitment to providing care in their rural communities. As of August 2024, the participating hospitals had already achieved 40% of their 2024 goal.

Activities will culminate in October, Breast Cancer Awareness month. Our partnering hospitals will post co-branded content on social media, and hand out promotional materials to patients and event attendees featuring our campaign message, “Small Towns, Big Fight: Screen for Breast Cancer!”

This campaign is a partnership between The Rural Collaborative, Washington Department of Health, Hologic, and Molina Healthcare.

The Rural Collaborative is a network of 27 rural health systems in Washington State. We defend, create, and design the future of rural healthcare through collective strategy and action. To learn more about the Rural Collaborative, please visit our website at https://ruralcollaborative.com.