Former smokers get newly funded scan for lung cancer and encourage others to do the same, after finding cancer in time

The number of smokers choosing to get low-dose CT scans to see if they have lung cancer is steadily increasing, especially since this screening was recently approved for payment by Medicare, Grace Schneider reports for The Courier-Journal.

Janet Overman and Roger Cross Sr., both 70 and heavy smokers since they were teens, decided to get this screening and both learned they had lung cancer, but with different outcomes.

Overman, a retired administrative assistant from Louisville, told Schneider that she had smoked two packs a day until a health scare in the late 1990s caused her to quit after 35 years of smoking. She said that she knew she was considered a high risk for lung cancer and this prompted her decision to get screened at the James Graham Brown Cancer Center in November 2013.

Her original screening showed she had lung cancer, but a follow-up scan and biopsy showed no cancer. She has been placed on a monitoring program with no treatment necessary, Schneider reports. "I'm sure it was prayer," Overman told Schneider.

Cross, a Bullitt County resident and owner of a small freight-delivery service, said he quit smoking 18 years ago and also credits his diagnosis to "divine intervention," Schneider writes.

He told Schneider that while driving on Interstate 65, he spotted a billboard that urged people to get screened for lung cancer. "The Lord put that right on my windshield," he said.

That happened a year ago, prompting Cross to pay $185 for his screening at Norton Healthcare, where he learned that he had Stage 3 lung cancer. He has since had surgery to remove a lung lobe, plus four rounds of chemotherapy, and is doing well, Schneider reports.

Both survivors spend their time encouraging other longtime smokers and ex-smokers to get screened "while there's a chance to beat the disease," Schneider writes.

Overman's story is an example of why counseling is so important for people who get this lung cancer screening. CT scans are so much more sensitive than traditional chest X-rays, "detecting abnormalities the size of a grain of rice," and can often turn up false positive results, which requires future scans and test, Schneider writes. These scans also reveal other health conditions such as emphysema, coronary-artery disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Kentucky leads the nation in lung cancer and deaths from lung cancer, with deaths from the disease nearly 50 percent higher than the national average, according to the Kentucky Cancer Consortium.

Medicare announced in February that it will pay for low-dose CT scans for people at high risk of getting lung cancer. This includes people from 55 to 77 who are either current smokers, have quit smoking within the last 15 years or who have smoked at least a pack a day for 30 years, or the equivalent, two packs a day for 15.

This is welcomed news because early detection is the key to survival. People diagnosed early who have Stage 1 lung cancer have a 57 percent chance of surviving for five years, Schneider reports.

Schneider noted that last November, Kentucky received a $7 million grant to improve survival rates for lung cancer through a project called Kentucky LEADS (Lung Cancer, Education, Awareness, Detection, Survivorship) Collaborative, which will be led by the University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville and the Lung Cancer Alliance.

Research indicates that students throw away less food since new, healthier lunch rules were put in place

One of the most consistent complaints about the healthier school-lunch standards is that more food ends up in the garbage can, but a three-year study at urban middle schools says the opposite is true.

"Overall, the revised meal standards and policies appear to have significantly lowered plate waste in school cafeterias," says the report of the study, conducted by the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at the University of Connecticut and published in Childhood Obesity. It found that since the new standards have been in place, students have "consumed more fruit, threw away less of the entrees and vegetables and consumed the same amount of milk."

The researchers tracked students at 12 urban, low-income middle schools in an unidentified "urban school district" for three years, from spring 2012 to spring 2014. They analyzed students' food selection and consumption by photographing and weighing students' lunch trays.

The 2010 Healthy and Hunger-Free Kids Act, which requires schools to reduce salt and fat; use more fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains; and limit calories by age, was implemented in fall 2012.

The standards were put into place as an effort to combat child obesity. Kentucky is the first in the nation for high-school obesity, eighth in obesity of children 10-17, and sixth among 1-to 4-year-olds from low-income families, according to the "States of Obesity" report.

The study found that students ate more of their lunch entrees after the new standards went into effect, with 84 percent of students eating an entree in 2014, compared to 71 percent in 2012.

"Despite concerns that students do not like the new entrees that meet the whole grain and meat/meat alternate regulations, our data show that more students are selecting the entree and they are wasting significantly less because consumption is up to 84 percent," says the report.

It also found the share of students choosing vegetables dropped to 52 percent from 68 percent, but the students who chose vegetables ate nearly 20 percent more of them, "effectively lowering vegetable waste," says the report. The percentage of students choosing fruit "significantly increased" to 66 percent from 54 percent, with 74 percent of all students eating fruit.

Marlene Schwartz, the study's lead author and director of the Rudd Center, told Politico's Morning Agriculture that she expects the findings to be attacked, but said they are supported by solid data.

“I know that food directors have a really difficult job,” she told Morning Agriculture.“It’s hard to please all of the children all of the time, while keeping a tight budget … But I think [the shift to new standards] is the right thing to do."

The study was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Sen. Mitch McConnell faces diverse pressures on the question of repealing the federal health-reform law

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he still wants to get rid of Obamacare, and the Kentuckian is "under rapidly increasing pressure from conservatives to pursue an aggressive path to repealing the landmark health care law," but it won't be easy, Jennifer Haberkorn reports for Politico.

Ardent conservatives are calling for repeated repeal votes under budget reconciliation, which requires only 51 votes, not the 60 usually needed to do significant business in the Senate. But establishment Republicans "barely mentioned Obamacare" the day after the election, Haberkorn notes. McConnell indicated that 60 votes are needed for repeal, and it takes 67 votes to override a presidential veto.

"McConnell has said that he wants to use the Senate appropriations process to starve funding to the law. When asked about his strategy on Wednesday, he said Republicans would be 'addressing that issue in a variety of different ways' and hinted at using reconciliation by saying that 'There are some things we can do with 51 votes'," Haberkorn writes. "Reconciliation is tricky — it would require Congress to pass a budget resolution, which is no easy task, and in the end, even a successful Obamacare repeal bill would just get vetoed anyway. And by the time they’re done, Republicans would have squandered potentially months of their new majority debating health care."

Several Republican sources say that McConnell will all but certainly hold an early, symbolic full repeal vote that is expected to generate support from every Republican and probably no Democrats. It will fail to overcome the 60-vote threshold for a filibuster. Beyond that, the Republican conference will collectively decide the strategy: a full-bore attack on as much of the law as possible, or a selective picking and choosing of the most vulnerable pieces of the law," such as its tax on medical devices and the coming mandate that employers of more than 50 people insure employees who work 30 or more hours a week.

"While Obamacare on the whole remains unpopular, there are pitfalls in any repeal strategy that includes popular parts of the law," Haberkorn notes. "That includes helping people with pre-existing conditions get covered, the subsidies that make insurance more affordable, and the exchanges, which is particularly popular in McConnell’s home state of Kentucky."

Still, "In some quarters, anything other than the full-scale assault is unacceptable," Haberkorn reports. "When McConnell stated on Fox News the other day the simple fact that Republicans couldn’t repeal the whole thing, the backlash was swift. The Senate Conservatives Fund, which backed his Kentucky Tea Party primary opponent, accused him of being insufficiently committed and of 'making excuses for why he won’t deliver on his central campaign promise.' McConnell’s aides had to send out statements restating how much he despised the health law."