Dr. Christian Sanchez, a Navy lieutenant and head of internal medicine at Naval Hospital Yokosuka, Japan, seen here June 7, 2026, oversaw improvevements in patient preventive cancer screenings at the hospital. (Daniel Taylor/U.S. Navy)
YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — U.S. Naval Hospital Yokosuka has expanded cancer screening for sailors and families, boosting early-detection rates across several major cancers over the past year.
The effort recently earned the program top honors in the Pacific from the Defense Health Agency, according to the hospital.
Breast, cervical and colorectal cancer screening rates all improved, which staff attributed to more patient outreach and easier access to testing, according to a June 11 Naval Hospital Yokosuka statement.
“The overarching goal was to bring preventive care closer to the patient,” Dr. Christian Sanchez, a Navy lieutenant and head of internal medicine at the hospital, said Thursday by email to Stars and Stripes.
Sanchez, who also oversees some of the hospital’s breast, cervical and colorectal cancer screening measures, said his team “shifted from a passive model” to one that actively contacts patients through phone calls, messaging, reminder letters and routine clinic visits.
“We also focused heavily on reducing barriers by offering self-referral mammography, walk-in clinics and expanded fecal immunochemical testing,” he said.
Those practices helped raise the hospital’s breast cancer screening rate from 69% of the eligible population at Yokosuka in March 2025 to 82.8% in February, surpassing the Defense Health Agency’s goal of 78.64%.
Cervical cancer screening also beat the agency’s target, reaching 83.3% against a goal of 75.21%. Colorectal cancer screening rose from 59.2% to 64.5%, just shy of the agency’s 65.91% goal.
“This recognition reflects the hard work of the entire healthcare team, not just a single department,” Sanchez said. “Population health requires a dedicated team effort, and that shared accountability creates lasting success. Moving forward, continuous process improvement remains essential to our operations.”
Sanchez highlighted the importance of screening for cancer, many of which develop silently before symptoms appear. Routine screening allows for earlier detection and, in some cases, prevention, and early treatment generally leads to better outcomes, he said.
When cancer is caught early through routine screening, the five-year survival rate for many of the most common types is over 90%, according to Cancer Research UK. If detected after it has advanced or spread, survival can drop sharply, in some cases below 15%.
Screening also ensures readiness for sailors, according to Dr. Torrin Velazquez, a Navy captain, the hospital’s director and commander of U.S. Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command Yokosuka.
“Early detection creates opportunities to intervene before disease affects a service member’s health, deployability or long-term quality of life,” he said in the news release. “Every completed screening represents an opportunity to preserve health, maintain readiness and ensure our force remains prepared to execute the mission.”
