CU Cancer Center Leader Honored With Award Named for His Late Friend and Colleague

Jamie L. Studts, PhD, co-leader of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, has received the 2025 Elliot J. Coups Improving Health Through Behavioral Medicine Award, sponsored by the Society of Behavioral Medicine, for his longstanding research on implementing lung cancer screening in Kentucky and other states.

The award comes with a cash honorarium, but much more meaningful for Studts is being presented with a plaque bearing the name of his late colleague.

Coups, who died in 2020, at age 46, was a member of the Rutgers Cancer Institute in New Jersey and a member of the Board of Directors for the Society of Behavioral Medicine, where he held other leadership roles including program chair and member delegate. 

“Elliot was a super-bright guy whom I tremendously respected,” Studts says. “We had some mutual friends, then we ended up on the same study section, where I got to see his brilliance on display as he helped review grants. He became a colleague and a friend.”

Research to improve health

The Coups Award recognizes an individual who has demonstrated the application of research to improve health in individuals, groups, or populations. For Studts, the honor comes in recognition of his role as principal investigator of the Kentucky LEADS Collaborative, a program dedicated to reducing the burden of lung cancer through development, evaluation, and dissemination of novel, community-based interventions to promote provider education, survivorship care, and prevention and early detection regarding lung cancer. It is a partnership between the University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville, and the Lung Cancer Alliance, with grant support from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation.

“It's a multi-level intervention that works with state leaders in cancer control programs and lung cancer programs, trying to bring together those interested in advancing lung cancer screening to have an impact on state policy,” says Studts, former assistant director for Cancer Prevention and Control at the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center. “We look at things like how resources are being allocated at the state level toward lung cancer screening. Are there statewide awareness programs? How can we help them be on message with those programs? How can we help individual hospitals become more engaged with the lung cancer screening process?”

In existence since 2014, Kentucky LEADS also engages clinicians to make sure they are aware of the opportunities to refer for lung cancer screening and have the fundamental knowledge base, skills, and tools they need to make referrals. Additionally, the program works with lung cancer screening programs to help them improve the quality of their screening.

“Lung cancer screening itself is not going to change outcomes,” Studts says. “It has to be high-quality lung cancer screening to change outcomes.”

Difficulties of targeted screening

Lung cancer screening is different from other types of cancer screening, Studts says, because it is targeted rather than population based.

“Population-based cancer screening is what we do for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancers — once folks reach a certain age, everyone gets screened,” he says. “It's different in lung cancer because we stratify the risk not only based on age, but also smoking history. Having an understanding of someone's smoking history is the principal reason lung cancer screening works. We can define the community of individuals who are at highest risk, and they can be eligible for screening.”

That targeting also presents difficulties, he says, because smoking is an activity that is socioeconomically stratified, occurring predominantly in communities with a lower amount of resources.

“The community we're trying to serve has a much more tenuous relationship with the health care system, including economic relationships and trust relationships,” Studts says. “They feel more stigmatized and fatalistic about lung cancer, so it's a different process of engaging this community. We need to be their partners, not their coaches. We don't need to be telling them what to do. We need to be inviting them into the opportunity and supporting them through the process.”

Seeing results

Over the past 12 years, the Kentucky LEADS program has led to a more-than 10% decline in late-stage lung cancer diagnosis in the state and a nearly 20% decline in the Appalachian region of Kentucky, which has one of the highest rates of lung cancer mortality in the world. Kentucky now has the second-highest rate of lung cancer screening in the U.S., due in part to the Kentucky LEADS Collaborative.

At the CU Cancer Center, Studts now has a grant to launch similar programs in Mississippi and Nevada — states chosen due to their high lung cancer burden, low screening rates, and opportunities to address health disparities, as well as coalition capacity and readiness.

The Coups Award, he says, is validation that he and his team are conducting meaningful research that is saving lives.

“It’s great for me, but it’s also recognition of the work that our team has done and continues to do, particularly my colleagues at Kentucky,” he says. “It’s also important for the work, because lung cancer screening is still poorly understood by our society. Every bit of awareness that can be raised makes a difference.”