Downwinder clinic's funding renewed

ST. GEORGE — Federal funding for Dixie Regional Medical Center's downwinder cancer clinic has been renewed, and that is good news for thousands of people who worry about the deadly disease.

"We are glad to have had such a great response and want to hammer home the point that when dealing with cancer, early detection is the key," said Becky Barlow, oncology nurse and director of the hospital's Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program (RESEP).

Downwinders are defined as the estimated 40,000 people who were exposed to radiation from above-ground nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site during the 1950s and 1960s.

And thousands of southern Utah downwinders are seeking medical care and compensation from the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which provides $100,000 or more to qualified cancer patients or their survivors.

"Downwinder patients are at higher risk for certain cancers," Barlow said. "The government has identified 20 cancers that they compensate for. They (downwinders) can't change their exposure risk, but they can be proactive about screening and early detection. This does save lives."

The clinic literally could help several hundred more people now that an important time requirement has been revised, Barlow noted. Under the new guideline, those people who lived in a radiation exposure area between 1951 and 1958 for one year, and not the previously required two years, are now eligible.

"Patients who fit the downwinder criteria should come in for yearly cancer screening exams either at the RESEP or with their own physician," she said. "In fact, we are required to do periodic follow-up with these patients in the clinic."

DRMC's three RESEP clinic locations in St. George, Cedar City and Hildale have screened more than 10,000 people for various cancers since opening in March 2004.

"Among the early diagnoses we have made are two women with breast cancers so small that they couldn't be felt by physical exam," said Barlow. "These women have a much better chance of beating the disease because it was caught so early."

Funding for the clinic is awarded on a yearly basis by the Department of Health and Human Services. HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, Utah's former governor, announced earlier this month that funding for the nation's seven RESEP clinics, all based in the Southwest, would be renewed.