SEPTEMBER 2009

Breast Center Receives Avon Grant

The Avon Foundation has awarded $750,000 to the Emory Winship Cancer Institute and the Avon Comprehensive Breast Center at Grady Memorial Hospital. The grant will be used to continue funding community outreach, education, clinical access, and four research studies that directly affect care for the underserved populations in Atlanta.

"We are grateful to the Avon Foundation for their extraordinary and steadfast support," says Sheryl Gabram, MD, principle investigator on the Avon grant and director of the center. "Our aim is to reach 10,000 or more women through outreach and education presentations throughout Atlanta. We also will increase mammography, treatment services, and access to clinical trials to underserved women."

Dr. Gabram says the Avon Foundation's support in previous years has resulted in significant improvements in the breast center at Grady.

"The number of women diagnosed with breast cancer at early stages has doubled," she says, "with a corresponding decrease in the number of women who are diagnosed with late stage disease. We are providing over 16,000 mammography, diagnostic, and screening services annually and this is a significant increase from past years."

Since 2000, the Avon Foundation has awarded more than $11,000,000 to Emory Winship and Grady. The funds have been instrumental in building new facilities, acquiring state-of-the-art equipment, and supporting leading-edge breast cancer research projects aimed at improving outcomes for underserved women diagnosed with breast cancer in Atlanta.

"This grant will enable us to build upon the success of our navigator program," says Dr. Gabram. "Our breast clinics will be staffed with patient navigators who are also breast cancer survivors and who can immediately reach out to newly diagnosed breast cancer patients. For these patients, we will evaluate their need and provide personalized support from breast cancer survivor navigators on an ongoing basis."

In addition to an emphasis on outreach and clinical services, the grant will support research projects that will examine how access to care, income, and other factors impact breast cancer survival among women in Georgia; how a specific surgical procedure affects patients' return rate to the operating room; and why African-American women with estrogen receptor positive tumors have worse survival rates than Caucasian women. The grant will also support a collaborative research study with the San Francisco General Avon Comprehensive Center, investigating an educational risk-assessment tool to help patients understand the importance of genetic counseling and referral.

The Avon Foundation Comprehensive Breast Center at Grady Memorial Hospital's Georgia Cancer Center for Excellence is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary breast care program, offering a full spectrum of clinical and support services, including screening, diagnosis, treatment, counseling, and laboratory research. Its mission is to expand breast health care for medically underserved women in metropolitan Atlanta.

<<::Back to 2009 Notable News and Achievements

return to top