Breast Cancer – building partnerships

VISUAL:  Picture changes to different women as each speaks.

WOMAN 1:  We had to find partners in the community who could find the women who really needed the mammograms the most.

WOMAN 2:  It is very important to go over there to the places that they are.   Even, there could be groups, could be ah… the schools, in this case we went to the laundry mat.

WOMAN 3:  There is no word for cancer in any of our traditional languages.  You know it’s not something that we have grown up with or lived with until very, very recently.

WOMAN 4:  We support each other in everything.   We need to start supporting each other in our health.   “Sister, did you go get your pap smear this year? Sister, did you go get your mammogram? We talk about everything else.”

WOMAN 5:  Whenever I’d come here into education, most of them would tell me, “I don’t need mammograms; I’m old enough to know I have cancer.”  But, you know, we’re trying to bridge that.

WOMAN 6:  We have created what you might say is a circle,  and a woman can enter that circle at the point of a mammogram and she has complete support, all the way around that circle.

Text on Screen: Building Partnerships for Breast Health

VISUAL:  Scene in background while narrator is talking:  flashing pictures of members of the panel of experts and other people gesturing and talking while taking part in the teleconference.

NARRATOR:  April 24, 1996, more than 15,000 participants gathered at 650 different locations across the United States.

 VISUAL:  Picture of Carol Simpson: “Hello I’m Carol Simpson.  Welcome to our teleconference.”

 VISUAL:  Flashing pictures of panel continue.

NARRATOR:   They listened and learned from each other and from a panel of experts called upon to address the critical issue of breast cancer outreach.  The facts were well known to those assembled.  In 1996, 65% of women 50 and older will not have a screening mammogram.  More than 184,000 women will be diagnosed with, and more than 44,000 will die from breast cancer before the year ends.  Building partnerships for breast health outreach was a national call to forge new partnerships to combat breast cancer.  This unprecedented national teleconference was sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program, and Avon’s Breast Cancer Awareness Crusade, an extraordinary public/private partnership.

Picture of David Satcher, MD, Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:  
  
SATCHER:  Historically the public/private partnership is a fairly recent innovation.  And in this case it is used to extend the services of CDC further into communities.  As we move into the 21st century, it will become increasingly important for public health organizations, as well as private agencies and volunteer organizations to form nontraditional public/private partnerships with businesses such as Avon Products in order to both extend and enrich our services for underserved communities.