Mobile mammogram unit aims to serve hard-to-reach pockets of Nashville

The bright pink tour bus sitting right off Charlotte Avenue was hard to miss.

It wasn’t carrying any famous musicians; it’s been turned into a portable mammogram clinic.

Metro Public Health partners with Ascension Saint Thomas to offer low- and no-cost breast cancer screenings. On Monday, the unit was at the Lentz Public Health Center in West Nashville.

“We know sometimes people put off preventive screenings like mammograms,” said Emily Davis, coordinator over the health department’s breast and cervical cancer screening program. “We’re doing this to reach people and meet people where they are.”

Metro Public Health offers reading materials to residents using the mobile mammogram unit. The department is also offering residents who attend its events opioid antagonists. (Tennessee ranks second in the nation for overdose deaths.)

To qualify, residents have to be 40 or older, and they have to have gone at least a year since their last screening.

The clinic accepts insurance. Those who are uninsured could qualify for free testing.

Metro Public Health is one of several agencies across the state offering these low- and no-cost screenings. Davis said in an earlier interview that only about 16% of the Davidson County residents who qualified for free testing last year ended up getting the test.

Tennessee’s uninsured rate is higher than most other states’. Estimates vary, but it’s somewhere between 8% and 12%. Nationwide, that rate is 7%.

The difference is due, at least in part, to the state’s decision to opt out of Medicaid expansion. That policy would allow more working adults to qualify for TennCare. There’s some debate about how many Tennesseans would be allowed to enroll — somewhere between 95,000 and 330,000.

The uninsured rate varies widely by race and ethnicity. More than four in 10 Hispanic Tennesseans don’t have health insurance, according to an April report by the Commonwealth Fund. Nationally, that number is closer to two in 10.

The bus’ next stop will be the East Nashville location of the Lentz Public Health Center at 1015 Trinity Lane on June 26. It will then show up at the Woodbine clinic at 224 Oriel Avenue on July 23.