Dr. Teresa Owens Tyson is a family nurse practitioner and CEO of the Health Wagon. She recalls the story of a young woman in Southwest Virginia, who didn’t know she had cervical cancer, until it had progressed. She died at the age of 28.
“When they had an abnormal pap smear, they had nowhere to go for the colposcopy,” Tyson recalled. “So we went and learned how to do them ourselves.”
For more than a decade, Tyson and another provider have been performing these exams at their clinic in Wise, and in their mobile health vans. Joining remotely at the other end of the camera are specialists at UVA. This saves patients a five-hour drive to Charlottesville.
The Health Wagon is a free mobile clinic, the oldest of its kind in the United States. Now, thanks to a grant from the US. Department of Agriculture, they’ll soon have two new devices, made by Liger Medicine. They’re smaller and easier to use in a mobile clinic than the cameras the Health Wagon had previously been using.
The Health Wagon is partnering with the University of Virginia on the program.
“It can be supported by gynecologic oncologist remotely, so that someone can be looking at the image with the provider who is on site with the patient, and together identify areas that are at risk and are in need of biopsy,” explained Dr. Karen Rheuban, director of the UVA Center for Telehealth.
“Cervical cancer in this day and time is totally preventable,” said Dr. Paula Hill-Collins, the Health Wagon’s clinical director. “It’s screening early. And it makes a difference with any cancers, but especially with cervical cancer, whether you find something early and you have biopsies done. You have treatment immediately, and you go on with your life.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control, all woman should be screened for cervical cancer by getting regular pap smears, beginning at age 21. With early detection, this cancer is very treatable.
