HJBR Jan/Feb 2022

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE I  JAN / FEB 2022 17 MBP continued... engaged in protecting workers that work in those plants and people that live nearby so that they’re safe. Beyond that, I have not invested my per- sonal time other than to go into the commu- nities nearby plants and educate about ciga- rette smoke and healthy diets and healthy exercise and early detection and preven- tion, because I know those things work. We know that a person that gets a breast cancer screening and a mammogram when they have a family history, if they start that pro- cess at the right age and they get it every year, that if they get diagnosed with cancer, the chance of their having a positive out- come is very strong. So, it goes back to what I said before: I know the answer to a big part of the cancer problem in Louisiana, which is access to care, access to education, the prevalence of cigarette smoking and the prevalence of people not taking advantage of early detection and prevention activities. We’re going to stay at that every day. If and when somebody can correlate that there’re things we need to do geographically based on where people live and proximity to industry, we’ll layer that part of our pro- gram in as well. Editor: Thank you. That’s a perfect segue to our next question set. Stevens: Yeah, that’s such hard stuff. I wish somebody could answer that question. If you don’t knowTerry Fontham, she’s a pro- fessor at the LSU Health Science Center in NewOrleans. She’s an incredible cancer epi- demiologist. I think Terry is still in the game. She may have retired, but I know she’s still in the game out there. She would be such a tremendous resource for you to talk to on that subject with her depth of knowledge and investment of time. She would be ter- rific at being able to provide you a lot more research-based and scientific-based context around those questions. Editor: Thanks, Todd. It feels a little personal to me sometimes. Stevens: Yeah. It’s personal to me, too, so I get where you’re coming from. What’s per- sonal to me is that, ultimately, Louisiana, we have underinvested in things we know will save lives. We have underinvested as a state in education, early detection and preven- tion of cancer, and then access to treatment across our rural parishes, and these disad- vantages that impede people from having an early diagnosis or avoiding a diagnosis all together and then getting quality care is something we need to keep investing in. That’s what Mary Bird Perkins, as a commu- nity nonprofit exists for. Acommunity non- profit, if you go look on Google, it’s going to tell you that what that means is it’s an organization dedicated to improving lives, where people live in a community. And, the only way to improve lives is to figure out where disparities exist and why negative outcomes are occurring and then to start addressing them. Editor: I’d like to discuss the elephant in the room, if you will. After losing someone I loved dearly recently to cancer, I was a bit surprised by some of the reaction in the Baton Rouge community to the recent split between OLOL and Mary Bird Perkins. It is my experience that competition among worthy competitors in the healthcare field typically raises the level of patient care and provides more options for both providers and patients. What am I missing? Stevens: You are not missing anything. I gave a talk at the rotary this past Wednesday, and someone asked me a question about that. I’ll try to repeat my response, because I think it just reinforces what your conclusion is: that you’re not missing anything. When I moved back to Baton Rouge in 1999 — prior, I was in Texas for 12 years, and I worked at MD Anderson for about nine years, and I worked for a company called American Oncology Resources [now US Oncology, Inc.], which became what is US Oncology today, so my entire career has been in cancer care — it was evident to me that there were really high-quality physicians here, but the invest- ment in the tools and personnel that they needed to be successful for their patients was lacking. The way I answered that question was by Mary Bird Perkins board making these investments to go into new communities and partnerships with those communities and healthcare partners, by expanding into our prevention and early detection pro- gram, which screened over 100,000 people across the state, by investing in our Preven- tion on the Go program, which now oper- ates two mobile medical clinics and is about