Texas C-Step

What is Texas C-STEP?

The Texas Cancer Screening, Training, Education and Prevention Program, or Texas C-STEP, is conducted through the Texas A&M Health Family Care Clinic. Texas C-STEP provides critical safety-net services, such as cancer screenings and certain advanced diagnostics, to uninsured, underserved and low-income Texans through the Texas A&M family medicine residency training program.

Texas C-STEP is funded by grants from the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas. The grants provide much needed access to cervical, breast, colorectal, lung, and liver cancer screenings, while also increasing screening capacity and providing training opportunities for resident physicians and nursing students. The program serves as a state and nationwide model for translating cancer screening services, such as colonoscopy, into the family practice setting - colonoscopies conduceted through the resident physicians have been comparable with colonoscopies conducted by specialists.

Through the College of Nursing's innovative collaboration with clinical partners, Family Nurse Practitioners (FNPs) as well as nursing students have been able to contribute towards breast and cervical awareness and education, screening rates, early detection, research, while at the same time gaining valuable hands-on experience. The College of Nursing team has been successful in reaching low-income and uninsured women within remote rural settings in the extended Brazos Valley Region.

Funding for this prevention and screening project has dramatically increased the availability of various cancer screenings for safety-net patients, while increasing both the number of family medicine physicians trained to conduct colonoscopy screenings as well as FNPs and nursing students to conduct breast and cervical cancer screenings. Additinally, numerous community health workers (CHWs) provide culturally-appropriate outreach, education and navigation services to the patients who receive cancer screenings at the Texas A&M Health Family Care clinic.