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Grant allows HCC to expand mobile mammography services   The MUSC Hollings Cancer Center’s mobile health unit will expand its cancer prevention service from three to 10 Lowcountry counties thanks to a $200,923 grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation. A $4.1 million gift from the Avon Foundation enabled the CDC Foundation to fund MUSC and seven other institutions across the country to provide or expand mobile mammography screening services to underserved women. MUSC will be using the funds for expansion of services as well as for mobile unit renovations.    MUSC’s focus will be serving African American and Hispanic women in isolated communities. Two part-time bilingual Hispanic outreach workers will be hired to assist in recruiting Hispanic women for mammography screening and for Pap smear screening.     To reach these individuals, MUSC will partner with the state’s federally funded breast and cervical cancer screening program, the Best Chance Network; the community health clinics in the counties; Our Lady of Mercy Wellness Center, Johns Island; St. Ciprian Friendship Place, Pawleys Island; the S.C. Hispanic Health Coalition; and the African American and Hispanic churches in the counties.     In 2002, more than 211,000 cases of breast cancer were diagnosed in the United States and nearly 40,000 women died from the disease. According to the CDC, timely mammography screening among women aged 40 or older could prevent roughly 16 percent of all breast cancer deaths. CDC says 3.5 million women between the ages of 40 and 64 are uninsured, have limited income and are less likely to be screened. These women are more likely to have their cancers diagnosed at a later stage and therefore have a higher risk of dying from the disease.   “While CDC and its partners have been able to reach uninsured and underserved women through community-based breast and cervical cancer screening services, there still is a critical need to find innovative ways, like these mobile mammography vans, to increase the number of women who have access to life-saving, preventive screening measures,” said Nancy C. Lee, M.D., director of CDC’s Division of Cancer Prevention and Control. “The Avon Foundation gift will extend the network of services to reach more women in need, those who are hard to reach and those who are rarely or never screened.”     Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to petersnd@musc.edu or catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Community Press at 849-1778.