Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center

Ensuring Cancer Care Equity for North Baton Rouge

Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center (MBPCC) is the state’s leading community cancer care organization, serving nearly 41,000 patients throughout the Gulf South in 2025 and projected to serve more than 55,000 patients in 2026. Nearly 97% of patients receiving care at MBPCC are from areas designated as medically underserved. With strategic hospital and physician partnerships, it is delivering on its mission to improve survivorship and lessen the burden of cancer. View the latest outcomes in the Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center Year 4 Infographic (PDF). 

Through the Alliance

In 2022, MBPCC established a comprehensive navigation program to overcome health system, provider and patient-focused barriers, including social drivers of health (SDOH). Today, the program has grown to include more than a dozen patient navigators supporting over 600 patients. MBPCC is working with Baton Rouge General and Woman’s Hospital as well as a Community Advisory Board (CAB) to address patient challenges and ensure care coordination is informed by patient needs.

MBPCC’s focus population is predominantly African American (73%). Many patients experience one or more SDOH barriers, such as financial strain (64% on Medicare/Medicaid or uninsured), unreliable transportation (24%), and food insecurity (23%). 

Program Impact (As of 6/30/2026)

For Patients:

• Engaged 100% of newly diagnosed patients with navigation services. Navigators have made more than 3,500 SDOH referrals and have a 98% utilization rate.
• Adopted the PHQ-2 screening tool to check for signs of depression and the Health-Related Social Needs (HRSN) tool to help care teams find unmet social needs. To date, 98% of patients have completed a psychosocial screening and SDOH screening.
• Decreased the average number of days from diagnosis to treatment by 30% (from 37 days to 26 days).

For Providers & Care Teams:

• Developed asynchronous clinician training resources for staff onboarding within the first 90 days of hire (i.e., cultural competency, implicit bias). To date, more than 100 clinicians and navigators have been trained. 
• Created a Patient Navigation Workflow Model that integrates patient care teams, nurse navigators and social workers at pivotal visits to ensure navigation begins alongside clinical care. Used this workflow to integrate electronic medical records (EMR) into navigation activities. 

For Health Systems: 

• Established a CAB of 13 members with representation from local hospitals and clinics, national equality coalitions, cancer foundations, Southern University, and cancer survivors and caregivers to address challenges and ensure workflows are patient-centered.
• Established 67 community partnerships with local care centers, nonprofits, and resource services.

Drivers of Success

• Embed Screening into Standard Clinical Workflow: Integrating SDOH and psychosocial screenings into routine care and automating referrals and reminders makes navigation part of routine care rather than an additional service patients must independently seek out.
• Implement Proactive, Automatic Navigation Referral Systems: Embedding automated diagnostic tools into the clinical workflow – specifically the NCCN Distress Thermometer; PHQ-2 and HRSN – creates opportunities to identify needs earlier and connect patients with appropriate support.
• Lean on Community Resources: Working closely with an engaged CAB guides navigation efforts to ensure that services are informed by patient needs. In addition, CAB engagement has been a crucial channel for awareness of programming and dissemination of key information to community members.

 

 

Meet the Team

Angela Hammett, MSN, RNC-OB, LCCE
MBPCC Project Director, Alliance for Equity in Cancer Care
Director, Patient Navigation & Support Services, MBPCC

 

Nicole Honoré, M.Ed.
Program Manager, Alliance for Equity in Cancer Care

Elizabeth Chesteen
Data Analyst