CARD Clinic to commemorate 10th anniversary
The 10th anniversary for the Center for Asbestos Related Disease (CARD) takes place April 1, the same day as National Asbestos Awareness Day and the beginning of Global Asbestos Awareness Week.
CARD has been through some major changes in the last 10 years and would like to take this opportunity to share our milestones with you, the community we serve.
Our story starts in 2000 when Dr. Brad Black formed CARD as a department of St. John’s Lutheran Hospital in an effort to provide follow up for people with suspected asbestos related abnormalities from the initial ATSDR screening program.
The initial screening was the largest asbestos disease-screening program on record and took place over two successive summers in 2000 and 2001. More than 7,300 current or former residents of the Libby area were screened using Spirometry and two-view chest x-ray.
Approximately 18 percent of participants were identified as having abnormal chest films by at least two out of three B-readers, which validated that a significant number of people were affected. Dr. Black worked closely with Dr. Alan Whitehouse, a consulting pulmonologist who had been following patients with asbestos-related diseases for the past 20 years.
Over time, it became evident that the health impacts resulting from asbestos exposure were not just work-related illnesses, but a communitywide issue.
The magnitude of the asbestos exposure was first publically recognized in 1999 when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer published a series of stories about the dangerous levels of asbestos in and around Libby. In 2002, Libby was declared a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency.
It didn’t take long before the CARD staff realized that the issues facing the community members exposed to asbestos were multifaceted and complex. The mission was expanded from clinical evaluation and care to include research and outreach to better understand and treat asbestos-related disease.
Thus, on April 1, 2003, CARD became a stand-alone 501(c)3 non-profit, community-based organization governed by a volunteer board of directors.
CARD begins to take an active role by facilitating asbestos health research and acting as a conduit for community engagement on a number of projects partnering with both agencies and universities.
In June 2009, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson named Libby the agency’s first and only Public Health Emergency by an environmental disaster.
The Affordable Care Act, passed in December 2009, supported Libby asbestos-exposed individuals in three distinct ways: a competitive asbestos health screening grant, Medicare benefits for anyone diagnosed with asbestos-related disease, and lastly a pilot program that provides health-related benefits that traditional insurances do not cover.
— Dusti Thompson
Outreach Coordinator