Nancy Brinker promised her dying sister, Susan G. Komen, that she would do everything in her power to end the shame, pain, fear and hopelessness of breast cancer.
After launching a national foundation, Brinker this week moved closer once again to fulfilling that promise with the opening of three women’s imaging centers in South Florida to screen women for breast and cervical cancer.
Women in Broward and Palm Beach counties who have no health insurance or are underinsured will be able to get free mammograms and ultrasounds, free pap smears and some free cancer treatments at imaging centers housed inside federally qualified health centers. Patient navigators will contact women in the nearby underserved communities to encourage screenings and arrange transportation. The new South Florida centers will serve as a template for more women’s imaging clinics across the state.
“Women in our community, regardless of their circumstances, now have access to screenings and care that can change the course of their lives,” said Rosalyn Frazier, chief executive officer of BCOM (Broward Community & Family Health Centers)
On Wednesday, at a ribbon-cutting in Hollywood, Frazier said she expects as many as 1,000 women in South Broward to be screened for breast and cervical cancer in the first year of the women’s imaging center through a partnership between BCOM and Brinker’s Promise Fund. Frazier said the plan is to work with the Promise Fund to soon open another women’s imaging center at the BCOM in North Broward.
Rosalyn Frazier, CEO of BCOM Broward Community and Family Health Center, speaks during a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the center in Hollywood on Wednesday. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Brinker, who founded the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation in 1982, now lives in Palm Beach, where she co-founded Promise Fund to get more women screened and treated early for breast cancer. While millions of dollars are being invested in research and potential new vaccines and treatments, Brinker said she wants to focus on screenings and early detection to catch cancers in a more easily treatable stage. The openings of these imaging centers this week, she said, mark the culmination of years of planning and persistence.
“We need to strengthen community health,” Brinker said. “We have to screen and do things early. It’s just logical. We have to reach everyone, not just people who can pay for it.”
In a private area within the Hollywood clinic, women with appointments for primary care or behavioral health can now also get mammograms.
“This is not hand-me-down equipment,” said Audrey Brown, the CEO of Promise Fund. “This is state-of-the-art equipment, which allows us to provide women with a one-stop shop. It’s much more efficient to have it co-located right here onsite. Because once you give a referral to a woman and say ‘you go get your screening somewhere else,’ a lot of times it doesn’t happen.”
In addition to Hollywood, The Promise Fund opened women’s health imaging programs this week in federally qualified health centers in Boynton Beach and West Palm Beach. The organization previously launched a pilot program in 2020 at Found Care in Palm Beach County — and considers it a success.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, left, Nancy G. Brinker of Promise Fund, and Rosalyn Frazier, CEO of BCOM Broward Community and Family Health Center, look over the new mammogram machine donated to the Hollywood center by the Promise Fund. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
“We’ve already seen a marked increase in screenings through our pilot program,” Brinker said. “We’ve provided nearly 10,000 mammograms and more than 5,000 pap tests since June 2020 — and we’ve navigated treatment of 247 cases of cancer found through those screenings.”
The Promise Fund plans to expand the concept in the future.
“Just think of how many women we can help by replicating this model throughout Florida, or even throughout the United States,” Brinker said. “We can — and we must — do everything within our power to help as many women as possible. That has always been our mission, and our promise.”
In 2023, U.S. Congresswomen Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Lois Frankel and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick helped to appropriate $3 million in federal funding for the Promise Fund’s women’s health program in South Florida. All three spoke at the ribbon-cuttings this week.
“This center gives people an opportunity to act when they know that something might be wrong,” Wasserman Schultz said at the ribbon-cutting in Hollywood.
Both Brinker and Wasserman Schultz spoke about the scientific focus on a cure and the dismissal of other spending as a waste of resources. “Early detection is our best way to make sure that we can ensure someone’s survival, or make survival much more likely,” Wasserman Schultz said.
David Brodsky, chairman of the board of The Promise Fund, said his organization believes in the public-private partnership model and will collect data from Florida to use in convincing other states to fund similar women’s health programs.
“Instead of just putting money into research, I would like to see putting money into community health care,” he said.
South Florida Sun Sentinel health reporter Cindy Goodman can be reached at cgoodman@sunsentinel.com.