Empowering Patients' Lung Cancer Screening Uptake (Empower LCS/Call+)

Lung cancer screening (LCS) with low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) can reduce the risk of dying from lung cancer, but many people who are eligible for screening do not receive it. The purpose of the Empower LCS/Call+ study is to evaluate new strategies to improve lung cancer screening among adults who are eligible for screening based on current U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) guidelines.

This pilot randomized controlled trial will enroll approximately 80 participants from UC Irvine Health and Emory Healthcare. Participants will be randomly assigned to receive either enhanced usual care or the Empower LCS/Call+ intervention. The intervention includes educational materials, reminders for patients and primary care providers, and information about financial and community resources when appropriate. Participants who do not complete lung cancer screening after the initial intervention may receive additional telephone-based navigation through the Call+ program to help identify and address barriers to screening and help with scheduling.

Participants will complete a baseline survey and follow-up surveys at 4 and 8 months, and researchers will review electronic health record information to determine whether lung cancer screening was discussed, ordered, and completed. Some participants will also be invited to complete a one-time interview about their experiences with the study.

The results of this study will help determine the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness of the Empower LCS/Call+ intervention and will inform future efforts to improve equitable access to lung cancer screening.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. Although annual lung cancer screening with LDCT is recommended for adults at high risk and has been shown to reduce lung cancer mortality, screening uptake remains low. Barriers to screening exist at the patient, provider, and health system levels, including limited awareness of screening eligibility, incomplete documentation of smoking history in the electronic health record, logistical challenges, financial concerns, and psychosocial barriers such as fear, stigma, and mistrust.

The Empower LCS is a multilevel intervention designed to improve lung cancer screening uptake by combining patient education, provider notification, patient reminders, and information on financial and community resources. The intervention demonstrated improvements in lung cancer screening discussions and low-dose computed tomography ordering and completion compared with enhanced usual care in prior pilot study.

The current study evaluates an enhanced version of the intervention, Empower LCS/Call+. Participants who have not completed lung cancer screening after the initial intervention will be eligible to receive the Call+ telephone navigation intervention. Call+ is delivered by lay navigators and is designed to identify participant-specific barriers to screening, provide education and motivational support, facilitate primary care or imaging scheduling when appropriate, connect participants with available financial or community resources, and encourage completion of recommended lung cancer screening.

This prospective, multi-site, pilot randomized controlled trial will enroll participants from UC Irvine Health and Emory Healthcare. Potentially eligible participants will be identified using a combination of structured data and natural language processing of free text notes to extract smoking history from electronic medical records. Eligibility will be confirmed via self-report.

Participants will be randomly assigned to receive either the Empower LCS/Call+ intervention or enhanced usual care. Data will be collected through participant surveys, electronic health record review, intervention process measures, and qualitative interviews with a subset of participants to evaluate implementation experiences.

The primary purpose of this pilot study is to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness of the enhanced intervention while providing implementation data to inform future randomized trials.