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Health care professional fight for less fortunate by Weslynn Chubb Public Relations Every day health care professionals are assuming the roles of warriors in the fight to help the less fortunate. Chris Kindt is one of these warriors. Chris Kindt Kindt, who graduated from MUSC in May with a Masters of Science in Nursing, played a major role in helping to provide under-insured women in their 40s who are at high risk of having breast cancer with needed testing.  Such a feat was the result of a grant from the Susan Komen Foundation, which she helped research and write during the summer of 2000.  Kindt, who has worked at MUSC since 1990 and presently works as staff nurse and unit educator for the Surgical-Trauma-Neuro ICU and the Burn Center, became involved in collaborating on the grant proposal while fulfilling her clinical hours at the St. George Medical Center. She worked as a family nurse practitioner student through South Carolina Rural Interdisciplinary Program of Training (SCRIPT), a program that provides students with experiences in rural health care environments.  While working under the supervision of family nurse practitioner Nina Ellison, Kindt, along with her coworkers, realized that many low-income female patients in their 40s were not getting the follow-up tests they needed after receiving positive mammogram results.  “If they didn’t have the money, they didn’t get the care,” Kindt said. Kindt and Ellison were aware of the problem that these women faced, especially in the rural area of St. George, but were unsure about how to take action in finding the outside funding for follow-up care.  Upon attending a breast cancer awareness conference in June of 2000, however, they learned that grant money was available through the Komen Foundation. Kindt and Ellison left the conference with the motivation to get started on constructing a grant proposal that could possibly help provide the care that many women so desperately needed. For the next several months, Kindt and Ellison devoted their time and efforts to researching and writing the proposal. Using the skills she learned in the Community in Health class taught by Elizabeth Erkel, Ph.D., Kindt worked on the project in between seeing patients, as well as during her free time at home.  The grant proposal was submitted to the Komen Foundation in September of 2000 under the name Next Step, a title that reflects the program’s nature in providing the next step in care, and one that was coined by Michelle Lyonns, LPN, at the St. George Medical Center.  In December of 2000, Kindt and Ellison were informed that the $64,000 grant proposal was accepted and that the center received the funding.  Next Step now provides qualifying low-income women between the ages of 40 and 49, who live in Dorchester and Colleton Counties and who have positive mammogram results with $750 of credit for follow-up care. The yearlong program will continue to be funded by the Komen Foundation until January of 2002. Meanwhile, Kindt, who finished her work at the center in April and who is now studying for her family nurse practitioner exam, is optimistic about her plans for the future and about the role she can continue to play in helping the less fortunate. “Knowing that the money is available, once I can find wherever my little niche is, then I would like to look at [grantwriting] again,” Kindt said,  “because there are things I can do to help people and impact their lives that can make a difference.”