Baylor Ambulatory Care

Health Equity Improvement Project:
Screening Mammography Prevention

Carolyn Smith-Morris, PH.D., M.S., LPC
James Walton, D.O.
Elizabeth Trevino, Ph.D.

Baylor Health Care Systems (BHCS) has recently invigorated its efforts toward making health equitable. Through the creation of its new Office of Health Equity, headed by Dr. Jim Walton, several new research initiatives have been designed, funded, and initiated. These projects take aim at not only the clinical factors that make some people sicker than others, but the social and economic factors as well. These projects will direct multidisciplinary research teams at long-standing, community-based and clinic-based characteristics that contribute to unequal health in Dallas.

The Screening Mammography Project is one of the first of these projects. We are applying ethnographic and survey techniques to the uneven rates of mammography completion across the BHCS sites. That is, we are working to explain why patients in some BHCS clinics get their indicated mammographies more reliably than others.

In this project, we have graduate level anthropology and public health administration students conducting data collection interviews, archival research, and data analysis.