Rose Shields stood in a room surrounded by people touched by cancer and told Brett Wilson that his mission of helping others struggling with the disease was a worthy one.
She handed Wilson a check for $2,000. Shields, who works at the University of Kentucky's Center for Excellence in Rural Health, had met Wilson only the day before and was moved by his cause.
Wilson, overwhelmed by emotion, thanked Shields on behalf of Walking Miracles, the nonprofit he founded to help children and teens in West Virginia with transportation and other costs associated with cancer treatment.
Wilson, himself a two-time survivor of pediatric cancer, said Shields' donation would help roughly 10 families who have to travel long distances so their children can receive care.
"That's 10 gas cards and 10 food cards for 10 new families," he said. "It's overwhelming ... to know that people are seeing value in what I do means a lot."
Shields and Wilson were two of more than 100 who gathered in Charleston Thursday for Mountains of Hope, the state's cancer coalition, to announce its new West Virginia Cancer Plan in partnership with the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources' Comprehensive Cancer Program.
The updated plan is a comprehensive cancer control initiative that serves as a framework for doctors, patient advocates, policymakers, public health officials and communities with common goals designed to reduce and eliminate the number of cancer diagnoses and deaths in the state.
In 2016, 11,770 West Virginians will be diagnosed with cancer, and more than 4,000 of the state's residents will die from the disease, according to the West Virginia Cancer Registry and Health Statistics Center. Cancer accounts for roughly one in five deaths in the state, and is on track to become the leading cause of death in West Virginia in the next decade.
"There's too much at stake for our loved ones, our neighbors, our communities, our state and ourselves not to succeed in this effort," said Jim Keresztury, director of Mountains of Hope. "We want to do everything we can to prevent West Virginians from getting cancer ... and ensure West Virginians have access to excellent palliative care, that they have access to excellent hospice care, pain management, transportation, clinical trials when appropriate, that we work to support all of the providers of cancer care in the state to ensure every West Virginian has the best opportunity for quality of life when dealing with cancer."
Three major risk factors - tobacco use, poor nutrition and lack of exercise - contribute to 40 percent of cancer diagnoses and a slew of other chronic illnesses, and the cancer plan stresses integrating different statewide efforts to better tackle the factors that lead to cancer. The plan also highlights the need for addressing health-care access among rural and low-income residents, as well as the screening guidelines for common types of cancer.
"There were hours spent on language - making sure it was inclusive and comprehensive, yet simple and workable," said Sara Jane Gainor, assistant director of Cancer Prevention and Control at the Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center at West Virginia University. "We wanted a usable document that was easily understood and could be used by doctors, that could be used by nurses, that could be used by anybody. So we even included suggestions on how people could use it."
The plan includes targeted advice for how to approach the issue of cancer. For example, it encourages hospitals to sponsor community health screenings and businesses to provide tobacco cessation services for employees. The plan also includes recommendations for the general public, including having homes tested for radon, a common carcinogen, and wearing protective clothing when using pesticides or insecticides.
"There are many diverse cancer plans all over the country ... everyone's plan is supposed to be data-driven, with measurable objectives and results, and nobody in the country does that better than we do in our plan. Many people around the country have looked at our plan and will look at this new plan as a bellwether plan for others to use as an example," said Bruce Adkins, director of the Division of Tobacco Prevention for the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health.
For Adkins, a 14-year survivor of tongue cancer who received all of his care in the state, the plan is a guide that both the state and stakeholders hope will lead to a healthier West Virginia.
"I could not have gotten better care," Adkins said. "[The cancer plan] is always going to be with me; it's a tool I will utilize for as long as I'm still a survivor."
Reach Lydia Nuzum at
lydia.nuzum@wvgazettemail.com,
304-348-5189 or follow
@lydianuzum on Twitter.