SNMMI Elects Shannon Youngblood, EdD, MSRS, CNMT, RT(CT)(ARRT), as President of the SNMMI Technologist Section

Shannon Youngblood, EdD, MSRS, CNMT, RT(CT)(ARRT), has spent more than a decade on the advocacy frontlines for nuclear medicine technologists. Now, as the incoming president of the Technologist Section for SNMMI, she offers a combination of resilient advocacy, seasoned perspective and a clear-eyed vision for the profession's future.

One of the advocacy initiatives Youngblood is proud of centers around a long-standing state law in Louisiana that had blocked nuclear medicine technologists from performing stand-alone CT, even those holding certification from the American Registry of Medical Technologists (AART) or the Nuclear Medicine Technology Certification Board (NMTCB). After 14 years of advocacy, that barrier has finally fallen, according to Youngblood, a nuclear medicine technologist affiliated with Lane Regional Medical Center in Zachary, La.

"Now nuclear medicine technologists can do stand-alone CT if they are certified by either the ARRT or the NMTCB," noted Youngblood, who emphasized the victory was the product of sustained collaboration. "That took more than just me. It was a collaborative process, and everybody working together."

Looking ahead, Youngblood is focused on education and training for nuclear medicine technologists in preparing for the rapidly expanding world of theranostics. Pointing out there are more than 100 new radiopharmaceuticals currently in development or clinical trials, Youngblood emphasized the importance of hands-on workshops and student training programs to get technologists up to speed on new and emerging theranostic agents. However, Youngblood pointed out that utilizing theranostics is less novel than many assume.

(Editor’s note: For additional content from the SNMMI conference, click here.)

“We've been doing theranostics for over 80 years. We started out doing thyroid therapies. We can image the thyroid with I-123 and then we can treat with I-131. This is theranostics. A lot of people don’t understand, even some nuclear medicine technologists. They say: ‘I don’t do theranostics.’ Actually, if you do I-123 and I-131, you are doing theranostics. It's just the combination of imaging plus therapy and coining it into that term: theranostics,” posited Youngblood, a cardiac PET-CT technologist for CDL Nuclear Technologies in Baton Rouge, La.

What excites her is the expanding application of that approach to cancer treatment. "Nuclear medicine is precision medicine, and theranostics just opens that up to a broader level,” maintained Youngblood.

Beyond emerging therapies, Youngblood is also interested in tackling the challenge of expanding access to PET imaging, particularly in rural communities. While she noted that mobile imaging units are gaining traction, Youngblood said physician education is equally critical. The more referring clinicians know about what nuclear medicine can offer their patients, the higher the likelihood of ordering advanced imaging studies, according to Youngblood.

Underlying all of her goals is a call for greater unity, whether it’s grappling with individual state scope of practice challenges or acknowledging perspectives from those vastly different practice settings.

“ … We all have different perspectives, and if we learn to come together and discuss them and ultimately work toward the greater good for our patients and our profession, we can all be stronger, and that's how we move forward as a profession,” added Youngblood.

(Editor’s note: For related content, see “The Reading Room Podcast: Current Insights and Emerging Trends in Molecular Imaging and Theranostics for Prostate Cancer,” “Comparative PET Imaging Trial Shows Increased Detection of PCa Recurrence with 64Cu-SAR-bisPSMA” and “FDA Clears AI Software for PSMA PET/CT and SPECT/CT Tumor Burden Analysis.”)