Cancer Screening Quality Improvement Grantees and Technical Assistance Provider Partners

The Cancer Screening Quality Improvement (CSQI) program provides grant funding to a limited number of primary care clinics to assist in improving clinic systems and increasing cancer screening in Minnesota communities. The program partners with health care systems and clinics serving communities disproportionately burdened by cancer. 

The CSQI program works with primary care clinics to implement evidence-based interventions (EBIs) demonstrated to increase breast, cervical and colorectal cancer screening rates within clinic populations.

To ensure progress, clinics are required to share screening data with MDH and the CDC. Reporting requirements consist of progress narratives, quarterly screening data, and annual screening data.

Read more about the CSQI program.

Current grantees

• Hennepin Healthcare: Richfield, East Lake, Whittier
  • Hennepin Healthcare is a State Certified Health Care Home (HCH) with an acute care hospital and clinical system serving across Hennepin County. Hennepin Healthcare believes equity is essential for optimal health outcomes. They are committed to helping people achieve their fullest health potential by actively eliminating barriers due to racism, or any other consequence of social position or socially influenced circumstances through community partnerships.
  • The EBIs that Hennepin Healthcare is integrating are patient reminders and reducing structural barriers. Hennepin Healthcare is using their grant funding to enhance patient appointment reminders using MyChart messages regarding cervical cancer screenings. This EBI has alerted patients to their overdue screening and has made it easier for patients who prefer to schedule appointments themselves. 
• Indian Health Board
  • The Indian Heath Board (IHB) serves the American Indian population in and around Minneapolis. The IHB team assesses improvement areas and works with both MDH and AICAF to address the EBIs from a culturally relevant perspective for all patients, including Native patients.
  • Currently IHB has the following EBIs in place: provider reminders through a pre-planning form, provider assessment and feedback, client reminders, and opportunities to reduce structural barriers are all in place. At IHB, patients are followed up with up to three times about needing a colorectal cancer (CRC) screening, and after that, their referral is closed out, unless there are other circumstances to follow up on that the clinic sees.
• Lake Superior Community Health Center: Duluth
  • Duluth Lake Superior Community Health Center (LSCHC) is a Federally Qualified Health Center located in Duluth, Minnesota. LSCHC serves as an advocate for quality care and health equity for everyone in the communities they serve. LSCHC has an Integrated Care Coordinators’ team, which helps patients address patients’ social determinant of health, whether it be utility bills, housing, smoking cessation, food insecurity, or getting insurance coverage.
  • LSCHC is integrating all four EBIs (provider assessment and feedback, provider reminders, and patient reminders.. Their multidisciplinary integrated care coordination approach to ensure quality outcomes and meeting the patient’s needs. LSCHC implemented Care Message, a patient messaging tool that can send targeted messages across multiple modes. Using this tool allows for periodic reminders to be sent to patients about cancer screening.
• Native American Community Clinic 
  • The Native American Community Clinic (NACC) is a community clinic that focuses on American Indian health in South Minneapolis. NACC approaches health care by addressing root causes of health disparities including access to food, housing, and health insurance with services such as resource navigation, care coordination, outreach, and community-based activities using peer recovery coaches and community health workers. NACC strives to honor health and tradition by providing spiritual care and access to traditional healing.
  • NACC is implementing all four EBIs: provider assessment and feedback, provider reminders, patient reminders and reducing structural barriers. NACC has identified and prepared documents for rolling grant submission with Colorectal Cancer Coalition to cover the cost of colorectal cancer screening FIT kits for uninsured patients. 
• Neighborhood Health Source 
  • Neighborhood HealthSource's mission is to improve the health of the communities they serve by providing quality health care services that are affordable and accessible while advancing health equity for all. NHS is a Federally Qualified Health Center that brings education, resources, and services out into the wider community through events and programs with the Community-Clinical Linkage Approach.
  • NHS has integrated provider assessment and feedback, provider reminders, patient reminders, and reducing structural barriers. Part of this work has allowed NHS to add Fit Kit handouts and pap smear scheduling to their mammogram events and to the duties of their Community Health Educators (CHE).. In clinics, the CHEs look at the schedule to see if there are patients coming in who need cancer screening. Then, CHEs follow up with patients in-person after their appointments to provide education and answer screening questions.
• NorthPoint Health and Wellness Center
  • NorthPoint Health & Wellness Center is a multi-specialty, medical, dental, and mental health center with 29 providers, an onsite pharmacy, food shelf, and a human service agency located in North Minneapolis. NorthPoint is a well-known and trusted clinic and is deeply involved in the community, its health and development through an integrated model of health and human services. NorthPoint continues to develop programs and services that empower the patients and clients through intervention, prevention, and targeted outreach.
  • Using the CSQI grant, NorthPoint has implemented provider assessment and feedback, provider reminders, patient reminders, and reducing structural barriers. Using the CSQI grant, NorthPoint has also partnered with the American Cancer Society (ACS) on mini grants to advance outreach to minority groups and using incentives to encourage patients to get needed screening.
• Southside Medical Clinic
  • Southside is a Federally Qualified Health Center with one primary care clinic located in South Minneapolis. The clinic integrates primary care, behavioral health, vision, and dental care. They have a quality culture ‘Standard of Care’ approach, promoting whole-person care for their patients which they apply to other chronic disease measures but not limited to cancer screening. Many of Southside patients speak a language other than English and many patients travel from outside the Metro-area to seek care.
  • Southside has chosen to integrate provider assessment and feedback, provider reminders, patient reminders, and reducing structural barriers. Since receiving the CSQI grant, Southside has hired a Clinical Advisory Team Liaison, which is a clinician who acts as the bridge between the quality advisory team to update and provide other clinicians with necessary coaching and education

Technical assistance provider partners

Technical assistance providers partners aid current grantee clinic partners and build community-clinical linkages. They also assist the CSQI programs by facilitating relationship building with potential primary care clinics for future partnering. Some partners also provide outreach activities to communities.

• American Indian Cancer Foundation (AICAF) 
  • The American Indian Cancer Foundation (AICAF) is a national non-profit organization that was established to address the tremendous cancer inequities faced by Native communities. AICAF is Native governed; its board members and employees have an array of experience serving the health needs of their people. ACAIF’s mission is to eliminate the cancer burdens of Indigenous people through improved access to prevention, early detection, treatment, and survivor support.
• Minnesota Association of Community Health Centers (MNACHC) 
  • MNACHC is the non-profit membership organization serving Minnesota’s Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) also known as community health centers. MNACHC continues the promise of the community health center mission that was born out of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. MNACHC strives for a health care system where power and decision-making are equitable, reflect communities’ needs, and people’s dignity and voices are respected.
• The Stairstep Foundation 
  • Stairstep began in 1992 as a response to a set of crises/challenges that confronted African Americans. Stairstep’s mission is to reignite and sustain a spirit of community among African Americans. Their quest for wellness requires confronting the violence perpetrated on and within their community as a presenting issue, while aggressively engaging the root issues that rob their long-term peace.

Other CSQI partners

The CSQI Program works with other state and national partners to support our cancer screening goals, including but not limited to:

• The American Cancer Society
• The Minnesota Cancer Alliance
• Colon Cancer Coalition
• Colorectal Cancer Alliance