Baylor College of Medicine awarded $1.6 million grant to develop cervical cancer screening program f

Baylor College of Medicine has received a $1.6 million award from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

The money will be used to develop a comprehensive cervical cancer screening program for high-risk, uninsured and underinsured women in Harris County.

Goals for the project will be to figure out why some women do not get screenings and how best to get women with abnormal pap test results in for follow-ups.

“Support from CPRIT is an enormous boost not only for preventing cervical cancers for individual women in the community but also for figuring out how we can better assemble the health care model to help even large numbers of women in Texas and elsewhere," said Dr. Matthew Anderson, who will serve as principal investigator, in a press release.

Dr. Anderson and Dr. Haleh Sangi-Haghpeykar will collaborate with Loretta Hanser to establish specialty women’s medical health clinics and streamline the process of following up on abnormal pap smears. Dr. Lois Ramondetta will serve as assistant program director.

The grant was one of 14 awards announced by CPRIT to Texas institutions and organizations totaling more than $29 million. Twelve of those grants will focus on cancer prevention.  

BCM has received more than $61 million in CPRIT funding since the institute began awarding cancer grants to Texas researchers in January 2010.