Copyright Baton Rouge Advocate
Every day, Robert Walker wakes up before the sun and drives 12 minutes across Baton Rouge to Woman's Hospital off Airline Highway. There, he trades in his car for a 45-foot bright pink bus. He then starts his trek. Walker goes somewhere different each day. A clinic in Port Allen. A hospital in Assumption. A community center in Covington. He is the driver of the Woman's Hospital Mobile Mammography Unit, a traveling bus that provides mammogram screenings to underserved communities across Louisiana and parts of Mississippi. Walker stepped into Woman's Hospital back in 2006 for a comfortable, easy job working for the hospital that treated and saved his mother who was diagnosed with breast cancer. "I didn't expect to stay for 19 years," Walker said. Walker has plenty of experience, not only as a former DJ and teacher, but as a driver — he drove a truck in the Army when he was stationed in Japan. "I always thought I would move to Houston or Florida," the Baton Rouge native said. "But this is just a good way to give back. I never left." The mobile mammogram program initially started back in 1995, when studies indicated that women in outlying areas were not accessing screening mammography as they should. The initiative began as a van that contained a mammography machine that could be taken into a physician's office or a health unit. Lisa Baker and Wendi Chapman remember having to take out the light box for each X-ray, capture the film and haul the heavy equipment back into the van. Both women were pregnant at the time. When Woman's Hospital upgraded to the digital mammography in 2005, the unit needed a bigger vehicle to accommodate the new technology. The first mobile coach arrived in Baton Rouge on Nov. 15, 2006, just in time for Walker to start his first shift. The mammogram unit, called the "big-ole pink bus" affectionately by all who know it well, travels to 37 different parishes and five counties in Mississippi, bringing mammogram screening services to clinics, community centers, prisons, doctor's offices and more. The bus stops in time to open at 8 a.m., regardless of destination, each day and stays parked in one place until 3 p.m. Walker sometimes has to leave the hospital at 4 a.m. in order to make to the northern parts of the state like Ouachita and Morehouse Parishes before the first appointment. Each year, the bus travels to more than 200 sites, visiting 70 locations, and logging more than 20,000 miles. The coach requires seven to eight parking spaces. Walker arrives at sites an hour early to make sure everything is in the proper place, including having to ask people to move their cars every once in a while. After the coach arrives, Baker, the lead technologist, checks the mammogram machine to make sure any bumpiness or movement along the way didn't cause problems — that would cause shadows (called artifacts) that could confuse X-ray results. If there are any artifacts, the bus turns around and heads back to Woman's Hospital for service. "The mobile unit moves around a lot on the roads to get to each place," Baker said. "So we have to check every time we stop the bus." Each appointment takes 15 minutes. Results are sent to Woman's Hospital at the end of each day to be reviewed by a physician at the hospital. Patients should get their results back in a week. If a patient needs to be screened again, a physician from the hospital will contact them and notify them of their next steps. From January to July 2025, the bus saw 787 patients with 60% of the patients seen on the coach being noninsured or underinsured. The trio of techs on the bus The real stars of the show are Baker, Chapman and Krista Stark — the three friends who have been traveling around the state together for over 15 years, providing care to women across Louisiana. The trio is at a different location each day, but are sometimes circling back to locations monthly. They can actually remember most of the places they go based on some singular characteristics of bathrooms available to them across the state. "Is that the one that smells like fried shrimp?" Chapman said when discussing a trip south of New Orleans. Baker and Chapman have known each other since their Denham Springs days as children. At ages 6 and 4, they were fast friends. Now, they work with fellow Denham Springs High School alumnae Krista Stark. Stark works patient registration. All of her documents and the computer accessing the electronic medical record are precisely stored within the brown cabinets of the unit. Her desk is small, but she has a system. "I always leave the patient forms in the same place, on a clipboard by the sink, so Wendi knows where to find it," Stark said. "When Wendi's not here, I have to explain the process all over again." The close-knit trio have raised their children together — who all attended Denham Springs High School — and have made lifelong friendships with patients, some of whom come back annually.
