Cancer Health Fair offers education

HARRELLS – Fear can run rampant in a community and in a family when the word “cancer” is dropped.

A grassroots effort to educate and to be a beacon of light was on the hearts of the Rev. Dennis Funderbunk and Rev. Veronica Murphy, who minister at The Murphy Chapel AME Church in Harrells.

They organized a day of education entitled “Cancer Health Fair” which took place at the church Saturday from 11 a.m. – 2 p.m. In addition to many speakers who were cancer survivors, the church also brought forth LaVonia Lewis who is a grants writer, manager and youth programs coordinator for the organization MEN WOMEN United for Youth & Family. Lewis also brought her team that is a part of Junior MANRRS.

To help educate, equip and train others to help carry the torch, Murphy invited Dr. Angelo Moore, PhD, MSN, RN, NE-BC who is currently the Assistant Director of Community Outreach, Engagement and Equity (COEE) at the Duke Cancer Institute in Durham, North Carolina.

To have a heavy hitter such as Dr. Moore come and speak in the rural area of Harrells was huge to helping educate outlying areas in North Carolina.

“This is very important,” Rev. Funderbunk said. “It brings awareness and information to the community which need to be informed about cancer, things in the environment and things that they can better do to stay healthy.”

Murphy who is licensed to teach and educate per the Duke Cancer Institute said that Harrells is her hometown and to have this kind of a gathering was a major step for their community.

“We were hoping for at least 45 people, but we may get more,” Murphy said. “We knew we had to get the word out and we sent out the information to other people besides the immediate community. Mostly though, we really wanted the people in this community to come because they have a story to tell.”

“What we do at the Duke Cancer Institute is reach between 70 and 100 counties in North Carolina,” Moore said. “What we do is develop programs so we are able to reach the population. Not everybody is going to come to Durham, so I developed a program called Community Health Ambassador Program where we teach members of the community. They could be part of a faith-based organization or any type of community-based organization. What we do is teach them the basics of cancer.”

Patient Navigation is something that was developed at the institute and the idea was founded by Harold P. Freeman in 1990 to address barriers surrounding cancer screenings, diagnosis, treatment and supportive care. Duke Cancer Institute has officially adopted Patient Navigation (PN) as a systemwide program housed in the Office of Health Equity to help bridge the gap for those in the community who are in need of cancer-related health services.

Between PN and Moore’s program to implement training, the battle against cancer is heating up.

“We educate on the major cancers,” Moore said. “And we teach them how to utilize this information to develop a program that is appropriate for their community. Veronica (Murphy) was one of the individuals that we trained, so really she is implementing those things that we teach. She takes the information we give, back to her community because they trust her. They don’t know me, but she grew up here. If she says something, they are going to take it very differently than if I say it. This is just a demonstration of the implementation of the program that we have put together.”

According to the information provided by the Prostate Health Education Network, (https://phensummit.org/) Moore “provides overall direction, coordination, and implementation of DCI’s community impact-designed projects to reduce cancer outcomes disparities in the DCI community and across its Catchment Area.

“COEE goals are to: (1) Engage meaningfully, respectfully and collaboratively with community partners, (2) Build strong, bi-directional partnerships between our community and DCI cancer researchers, and (3) Develop a multilevel, prospective data infrastructure to guide community-DCI partnerships.

“The mission is to reduce cancer disparities and improve population health in DCI catchment area for historically marginalized and medically underserved populations such as the African American, Latinx, Asian American, Native American, Jewish, Muslim, LGBTQ+, refugee and rural communities.

“Dr. Moore leads the Community-Facing Navigation program at Duke Cancer Institute. Duke Cancer Institute utilizes a longitudinal patient navigation multidisciplinary matrix model, which incorporates multiple patient navigation entities. Within this longitudinal patient navigation multidisciplinary matrix, COEE has Community-Facing Patient Navigators, which is unique.

“These Community-Facing Patient Navigators are employees of the health care system, operate in the community, and trained by the Harold P. Freeman Patient Navigation Institute. Some responsibilities include providing cancer education on prevention, early detection screening as well as navigating individuals needing cancer screenings, follow-up for abnormal screenings to diagnostic testing, and into treatment if diagnosed with cancer. The uniqueness of being within the health care system allows these Community-Facing Navigators get patients to and through the health care system to maximize continuum of care.

“He is a member of the National Navigation Roundtable Steering Committee. He is also a member of the Evidence Based Promising Practices Task Group and the Membership Committee.”

Another part of the Cancer Health Fair Saturday was to introduce Lewis. Her website is: menandwomenunited.org and she is located in Columbus County.

She brought her MANRRS students to the Cancer Fair which helped educate them and also helped this community to see what a younger generation is capable of.

The benefits, according to Lewis, of Junior MANRRS (The National Society for Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences) is to encourage students to have a positive attitude towards academic excellence, stimulates enthusiasm about science, technology, engineering, agriculture and mathematics. It also encourages 7th-12th graders to pursue degrees in agriculture and other related fields as well as increases the number of undeserved and underrepresented students attending and graduating from college. Further, it provides mentorship from collegiate students and career professionals.

“Junior MANRRS has the potential to completely change the trajectory of a student’s life one program at a time,” Kayla Braggs, past undergraduate student president said.

The students that Lewis brought forth Saturday were also part of Youth Ambassadors For A Better Community which was established in 2015.

The mission of the Youth Ambassadors was said to increase the quantity, quality and sustainability of the communities throughout B.E.S.T. (Bolton, East Arcadia, Sandyfield Towns) while instilling leadership, entrepreneurship and social skills in teens across the tri-county area.

For more information about the church in Harrells and upcoming cancer fairs, contact Veronica Murphy at 252-267-6816. For more about the Duke Cancer Institute, contact Kimberly Bradsher at kim.bradsher@duke.edu. For more about MEN & WOMEN United for Youth & Family or the Junior MANRRS programs, please contact LaVonia Lewis at lavonialewis2018@outlook.com.

Reach Mark DeLap, of the Bladen Journal, can be reached at mdelap@bladenjournal.com