Breast health summit to focus on African-American women

Nationwide, African American women have a higher mortality rate of breast cancer, despite having a lower incidence. Different groups in the Cedar Rapids community have come together to address this health disparity. This March, a day-long Breast Health Summit will be held at the African American Museum of Iowa in Cedar Rapids. The event will be held from 9 am to 3 pm on Saturday, March 10. African American women of all ages, health care providers, and public health workers are welcome to attend this free event. Lunch and refreshments will be served.

The goals of the Breast Health Summit are two-fold. The first goal is to develop and complement existing relationships between local health care and public health providers with the Cedar Rapids African American community. The second goal is to empower and educate African Americans on breast health and breast cancer. The event will focus on breast cancer prevention, screening, and the local breast cancer resources and groups in Cedar Rapids. Session topics will include nutrition, physical activity, a breast cancer screening overview, and local resources. Many of the speakers will be African American women from the Cedar Rapids community.

Planning for this event has been a collaborative effort. The Iowa Affiliate for Susan G. Komen for the Cure provided the majority of the funding for this event to the Iowa Cancer Consortium (ICC), a non-profit dedicated to cancer prevention and control across the state of Iowa. The ICC has been working with many Cedar Rapids and statewide organizations, including the American Cancer Society, Hall-Perrine Cancer Center at Mercy, Linn County Public Health, the Office of Minority and Multicultural Health at the Iowa Department of Public Health, the Patient Advocacy Foundation, St. Luke's Hospital, and What's Going On Girl?

Information about the Breast Health Summit and a registration form is available at 

bit.ly/zRcTFW. More information is also available by contacting Katie Jones at (319) 467-4568 at

katherine-jones@uiowa.edu.