By William Seidman with Peter Guttchen
Peter Guttchen and his company, ORG, Organizational Resources Group, are long-time partners of Cerebyte. Their program “IdeaNet” was developed for them by Cerebyte. We asked him to write about his program for screening for colorectal cancer. It’s exciting and has the potential to positively affect so many lives. From Peter:
We work closely with the ACS, the American Cancer Society, to mobilize communities to increase their screening rates for colorectal cancer.
Guidelines call for people 50 years and older to get screened for CRC. In communities where screening rates are high, mortality rates from CRC is much lower.
ORG and ACS are initially targeting communities in Oregon and Washington with the lowest rates of screening.
To be successful, we must bring together community organizers, public health officials, hospitals, insurers, doctors, and others.
We are working on developing a model to support communities to mobilize these diverse (and sometimes competing) interests to take action to increase screening rates.
Once a proven model is developed, and initial results are encouraging, ORG and ACS will use its IdeaNet to support similar initiatives in additional communities.
This effort promises to save lives, reduce health care costs, and improve the quality of life for families and communities nationwide. We’re very excited about it.
Thanks to Peter for sharing with our blog’s readers this information about one of his and Organizational Resources Group’s next big projects.