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Avon Foundation Awards $800K To Capital Breast Care Center

In front of thousands of breast cancer survivors, advocates and their families at the May 4th Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, the Avon Foundation presented a check for $800,000 to Georgetown’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center for support of the Capital Breast Care Center (CBCC).  The Avon Foundation has provided $3 million to the Capital Breast Care Center since its opening in October 2003.  

The Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in Washington, DC drew over 3500 participants and raised more than $8 million. Led by Jeanne Mandelblatt, MD, MPH, associate director for population sciences at Lombardi, a CBCC/Lombardi team raised over $13,000 for the walk!

In addition, the CBCC, Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Georgetown University Hospital served as the medical sponsors for the event. Volunteer physicians, nurses, and other medical professionals provided care for the 3500 walkers during the two day event. The most common ailments were blisters and dehydration.

Lombardi's Director, Louis M. Weiner, MD, Associate Director Jeanne Mandelblatt, MD, MPH, and Deputy Director Peter Shields, MD, with actress Reese Witherspoon and Executive Director of the CBCC Amari Sokoya Pearson-Fields, MPH.

Over the past four years, the CBCC has reached more than 4000 women, providing cancer screening services in a culturally respectful environment. Through increased outreach to local communities over the past year, the Center has doubled the number of women it serves, reaching a new milestone of 200 women served each month.

Avon’s grant will support “critical safety net services to medically underserved women in the Washington metropolitan area.  The grant continues the Avon Foundation commitment to reverse striking disparities in breast health care in the DC area.”

In 2007, the Avon Foundation honored the CBCC with its Medical Advancement in Breast Cancer Award. 

The CBCC provides extraordinary quality care regardless of a woman’s ability to pay to underserved women in Washington, DC, a city in which women die from breast cancer at a rate of 65 percent above the national average and has the highest death rate in the country. The CBCC serves DC women who would otherwise not have access to vital services such as mammograms, genetic testing, patient navigation and quality care.