Photo by Filip Andrejevic on Unsplash.

Grant Award

Lauren Kearney, MD, Receives $100,000 Grant from LUNGevity

Lauren Kearney, MD, has received the Veterans Affairs Research Scholar Award from the LUNGetvity Foundation, the nation’s leading lung cancer-focused nonprofit. The award program is designed to foster a new generation of researchers interested in having a direct impact on improving outcomes for veterans with lung cancer. She received $100,000 for her study “Co-Design and Pilot Testing a LCS Awareness Toolkit for Black Veterans.”

Black Veterans face disproportionately higher rates of lung cancer diagnosis with poorer outcomes compared to other Veterans. Despite lung cancer screening (LCS) being a vetted, lifesaving tool, many Black Veterans remain unscreened due to low awareness, distrust of healthcare systems and negative beliefs about lung cancer outcomes. This research aims to address these barriers by partnering with the National Association of Black Veterans to co-design and test a community-based LCS awareness toolkit that can be distributed through trusted community organizations. The work represents the first step toward a larger randomized trial testing a culturally relevant intervention developed with Black Veterans to improve LCS awareness and uptake in this underserved population.