Dr. Sumedha Penheiter
speaker
89 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2023
last heard Nov 2023
Dr. Sumedha Penheiter’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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I think that The reason being is that we have great health inequities in our states. And a lot of those numbers are skewed a little primarily because we have high rates of incidents and mortality, not in total number, but rates in tribal areas. And we also have a lot of underserved populations that are so disproportionately impacted by this that the numbers overall are skewed.
And therefore I think cancer is the number one cause of death in Minnesota. However, I also think that our state has spent a lot of energy and time in controlling cardiovascular diseases and also investing in efforts to prevent cardiovascular diseases. bringing awareness to those.
But that level of engagement is still lacking in the cancer space, especially in the preventive and early detection areas. A lot of work is done post-diagnosis in treatment and then survivorship. And sometimes that is too late. And so I think those are a couple of factors that I can think of right away that are contributing to
cancer being the number one cause in Minnesota versus the rest of the state.
Well, I think that there's great inequities in cancer incidence and mortality rates. inequities, and they are around race, ethnicity, and other underserved populations and along ability, disability. I think it's a two-edged sword. I think Minnesota is a very health-conscious state.
So I think compared to other states, we have a lot of efforts on health fitness in general, which has lowered our cardiac death rates compared to other states. So it's that we're doing really well in that space or we continue to do well in the space of cardiac health.
So we are ahead of other states, but then we don't have that level of matching efforts yet, or even understanding because cancer is a very complex disease and it spans all the way from etiology to prevention, detection, treatment. So I think one is there's just not enough understanding
of the disease amongst common people and to the methods that are in place vigorously for cardiac disease, you know, such as getting your parameters checked cholesterol and your BMI, and also making sure that exercise is part of your early lifestyle. The same level of awareness and intention is not there in the cancer space to the same degree.
Well, we definitely get ideas on how to design and implement the cancer plan. across, based on other states. However, the emphasis here is to really focus on local Minnesota problems because of the fact that there is quite a bit of differences between states in terms of local burden.
And even within the state of Minnesota, we're trying to be very mindful of identifying regional burdens of cancer, for instance, like I said, on tribal land versus urban communities versus rural communities and understanding that the cancer burden is different.
So although we definitely get implementation and design ideas from other states, CDC does a really good job of, Center for Disease Control does a really good job of making sure that there's data available openly for all of us to examine what the cancer burdens are per state. And we are aware of that. So we do contact other states for tactics.
There are meetings that MDH attends with other state cancer plan committees. The goal is really to get ideas from them, but to focus on the local burden.
So, This plan is actually, the genesis of this plan is a lot of listening sessions, data review of cancer burden, and then concerns of the community. And Minnesota Cancer Alliance has a very robust partnership of members across the state that act as amplifiers of our information as well as information in and information out.
So the way this is done is trying to reach communities at the grassroots levels to the most extent possible and ensuring that not only are we looking at the data, but looking at logistics and practical tactics that either prevent early detection and screening or eventual cure and the process of cure. So we even help with legal insurance
we help with legal tactics with making sure that some of the screens as well as treatments are covered by insurance and are legislatively impacting the insurance companies so that they're enforced almost to cover some of the costs occurring with diagnostics as well as treatment. So I think the way that we are addressing this is
Again, going to grassroots level, looking at burdens, and then forming our strategies. So it's never an isolation or vacuum. It's always done in concert with the community members and the members that are part of the alliance.
So as you mentioned, we do focus on breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer screening. I want to point out that things that are in the objectives can only go so far unless they are adopted into policy. They really don't continue long-term and they are not sustainable.
And so to that, well, we have a very robust policy committee within the Alliance that has gone and lobbied at the state level with the senators and tried to tie almost every initiative with a policy so that it can actually be long-term sustainable and come to fruition. So we have done significant work in that space.
For instance, we have made sure that the cost sharing part of insurance, that insurance charges for breast cancer diagnostic testing is removed. We have also recently worked hard to have biomarker testing, which would be biomarkers that could lead to understanding of early cancer. that is not symptomatic yet or very early symptoms.
We have made sure that those are covered by state regulated insurers. So we have done some efforts in that space through policy. In addition, we have also gone through things like mobile mammography units and a lot of awareness in that space into rural areas
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