The Webster County Cancer Education Project, organized and managed by the Women's Health Nurse Practitioner and Midwifery graduate programs, is one of 38 international case studies to be featured in the 2009 WHO publication, Now more than ever: The contribution of nurses and midwives to primary health care.

The project began as a means to address healthcare disparities related to cancer incidence and mortality in a small, distressed Appalachian county in rural West Virginia. Through the education project, graduate students serve as health providers in free reproductive cancer-screening events. The ultimate goal is to reduce cancer incidence and mortality, with an emphasis on breast and cervical cancer prevention.

As the 2015 deadline for Achieving Millennium Goals draws nearer, the World Health Organization Director-General has called for "a renewed emphasis on primary health care as an approach to strengthening health systems." The WHO's "Compendium of primary care case studies" (in Now more than ever), is "designed to influence future progress" by identifying and disseminating case studies that "provide examples of best practice in primary care worldwide... in order to discern the common elements of, and barriers to, successful primary care deliver." 

The Webster County Cancer Education Project is a collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing and multiple local, regional, state, and out-of-state health and service providers and community members. The services provided inlude educational programs on primary and secondary cancer prevention, cancer screening clinics that provide appropriate free screenings for community members, and data analysis on the impact of these screenings.

To date, more than 100 women have been screened for cancer. Many had never been screened for breast or cervical cancer in the past.