The University of Iowa is opening a new program, the Community Health Assessment and Monitoring in the Pharmacy, or CHAMP, to increase lung cancer screening rates in Iowa to address the state’s high case rate and low survival rate. 

According to Iowa Health and Human Services, only about 20 percent of eligible Iowans receive a lung cancer screening annually. 

In a 2025 report, The American Lung Association indicated that the rate of lung cancer cases in Iowa is 60.3 per 100,000, above the national average of 52.8, with a survival rate of 27.1 percent, below the average national rate of 29.7 percent. 

The Iowa Pharmacists Association and Community Pharmacies Enhanced Services Network are using CHAMP as a five-year program to assist patients in scheduling a lung cancer screening at the pharmacy counter.

CHAMP enters its first phase beginning Feb. 2, Jill Kolesar, dean of the UI College of Pharmacy, said. The first phase will allow 500 eligible participants from Greenwood Pharmacy and Cedar Valley Family Medicine in Waterloo to enroll.

Kolesar said patients will enter the pharmacy and be met with questions to determine if they are eligible for lung cancer screening.

If patients are eligible — meaning they are 50 to 80 years old with a history of smoking — they will decide if they would like to undergo a screening in the form of a blood test, a low-dose computed tomography scan, or a less radiation-dense X-ray, which the pharmacist will assist in scheduling. 

Kolesar said the program looks to increase the low 20 percent cancer screening turnout number to 75 percent by the program’s end in 2031. 

“There’s a number of reasons people don’t want to undergo lung cancer screening, and a lot of them are related to the fact that they don’t know about it,” she said. “So this intervention will take care of that problem. Or they don’t want to schedule a low-dose CT scan, so having a blood test as an option
would address that.”

Kolesar said CHAMP will begin as a singular site in Waterloo due to its high rate of lung cancer, but members of the program plan to extend it to 10 additional community pharmacies. Kolesar said the program will last five years in total. 

“Our partner, the Iowa Pharmacy Association, is already working with us to conduct the training sessions for pharmacists to start offering this as a service,” she said. “We would hope to be able to roll this out nationwide to any community pharmacy who wants to offer this service.”

Kolesar said if CHAMP is successful, the program could also expand to screen for other forms of cancer. 

“What we’re planning on doing next is a cervical cancer screening,” she said. “The FDA just approved a new test to swab for cervical cancer for self- administration in health care settings. That is the next thing that we’d like to pilot.”

Kolesar said in Iowa, residents visit their pharmacies over seven times as often as primary care. Matthew Pitlick, the CEO of the Iowa Pharmacy Association, said the statistic points to the fact that pharmacies are the key to addressing Iowa’s low lung cancer screening rates. 

“Particularly in rural Iowa, pharmacies are going to be your main health care hub facility in those counties that don’t have many physicians or nurse practitioners,” he said. “In particular, you get farmers out there who are exposed to different carcinogens and chemicals, so this is a good opportunity for those people in our rural communities to have access.”

Emily Sadecki, an assistant professor in the UI’s Department of Family and Community Medicine, said a lack of access to primary care providers and barriers in accessing CT scans can play a role in Iowa’s low screening rates.

“The initial screen rates are low, but then the subsequent folks who follow up in subsequent years are also very low,” she said. “The pharmacy is a great place to assist that. [Patients] visit their pharmacy maybe once a month, where they might only be seeing their primary care provider once every six months, depending on the person.”

Sadecki said she sees CHAMP being a model for a future in which pharmacies partner with primary care offices for administering preventative health screenings. 

Sadecki said the CHAMP model will be particularly helpful during Iowa’s primary care shortage. According to the Cicero Institute, Iowa ranks 44th in physician supply and could be short 1,660 doctors by 2030. 

“I think using team members to the fullest ability of their training is important and a good way to try to close some of those preventive
screening gaps,” she said