Greg Sparks, president of Safeway's Seattle division, announced the gift today at a Safeway store on Seattle's Queen Anne Hill. Sparks displayed a check representative of the funds raised through a company-wide campaign and presented an artist's conception of the mobile clinic.
"We've been looking forward to this day for quite some time," Sparks said. "Our contribution is a true reflection of the passion our employees and customers have for bridging the gap between research and a cure for breast cancer. Providing funds to purchase a mobile-mammography van allows all our contributors the opportunity to see our dollars at work."
Starting in 2007, the clinic on wheels will reach women who lack easy access to mammograms due to difficulties with transportation, child care, work or other issues. The van, which will accommodate up to 35 women a day, is designed to fill a critical need by significantly increasing the number of women being screened with digital mammography.
"Working with the SCCA to institute this innovative program is a dream fulfilled for our employees and customers," said Cherie Myers, director of Public & Government Affairs for Safeway's Seattle division. "The digital mobile-mammography clinic will allow us to reach out to women who for various reasons have difficulty traveling to be screened for breast cancer. The more women who are screened, the more cancers can be detected early and treated when the odds of a disease-free life are substantially increased."
The clinic will be equipped with the most up-to-date digital technology, allowing mammograms to be transmitted via satellite to SCCA and University of Washington physicians for interpretation. Receiving a mammogram aboard a mobile clinic typically takes between 15 and 20 minutes.
Digital mammography can detect up to 28 percent more cancers than the traditional film method in certain groups of women. Those groups include young women and those with dense breast tissue, women who have not yet reached menopause, and women under 50.
The mobile-mammography clinic will be directed by Connie Lehman, M.D., Ph.D., who also directs breast imaging at the SCCA and the Department of Radiology at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
"We are extremely grateful to Safeway for its generous and visionary support of breast-cancer diagnosis and treatment," Lehman said. "With this project, Safeway provides more women with the opportunity to be screened through digital mammography, the most advanced technology for detection of breast cancer. We know that early detection is critical to improving overall survival rates for breast and other cancers. If breast cancer is detected early, the five-year survival rate is more than 98 percent."
Annual mammography screening is recommended for women 40 and older. Washington state has the highest per-capita incidence of breast cancer in the United States, yet many women in the state do not receive annual mammograms.
Mammography read by radiology specialists (rather than generalists) identifies more cancers with fewer callbacks for follow-up mammograms. Only mammography specialists will read the images generated by the Safeway- sponsored SCCA mobile-mammography unit.
Safeway has built its reputation for supporting humanitarian causes by involving employees through internal programs including the Safeway Foundation and Charities of Choice. Through such programs, employees can determine where their own charitable contributions will be directed.
The Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, established in 1998, unites the adult and pediatric cancer-care services of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, UW Medicine and Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center. A major focus of SCCA is to speed the transfer of new diagnostic and treatment techniques from the research setting to the patient bedside while providing premier, patient-focused cancer care. Patients who come to SCCA receive the latest research-based cancer therapies as well as cutting-edge treatments for a number of non-malignant diseases under development by its partner organizations. SCCA has three clinical-care sites: an outpatient clinic on the Fred Hutchinson campus, a pediatric-inpatient unit at Children's and an adult- inpatient unit at UW Medical Center.
The Safeway Foundation, working in partnership with local organizations, schools and individuals, seeks to improve the quality of life in the communities we serve. By carefully directing fundraising efforts and the generous contributions of the company's employees and customers, the foundation supports a variety of worthy causes including vital health and human services such as women's shelters, health screening and child care. Over the past four years, the Foundation has donated more than $29 million toward efforts to improve detection and treatment of breast cancer and prostate cancer
Safeway Inc. is a Fortune 50 company and one of the largest food and drug retailers in North America, based on sales. The company operates 1,775 stores in the United States and Canada and had annual sales of $38.4 billion in 2005. The company's common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SWY. Safeway's Seattle Division operates 2300 stories in Washington, Alaska, Montana and Idaho.
SOURCE Seattle Cancer Care Alliance
Posted December 9th, 2006 by ruzik_tuzik
