Brooklyn, New York 2008--Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center has received a $58,000 grant from the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation in support of their Women’ s Wellness Center’s Community Breast Cancer Screening Program. Kingsbrook’s CBCS program is designed to increase access to mammography services in underserved communities throughout Central Brooklyn. As such, the program will provide outreach, education, mammography, screening coordination, and case management services to minority women aged 40 and older.
As part of the program’s community outreach initiative, the Community Breast Cancer Screening Program will partner with faith-based and community organizations in effort to identify and recruit low-income women from a cross-section of ethnic backgrounds and faiths. Community partners will also: provide accessible venues for conducting outreach and educational sessions, help to identify women at-risk and will assist in the follow-up with women who have positive mammograms; an effort to provide culturally sensitive support for women diagnosed with breast cancer.
Through the proposed program, 2,500 women will be counseled about the importance of breast screening, 450 will receive a mammogram and screening coordination services, and 50 women with abnormal mammograms will receive ongoing care coordination for treatment, and the necessary referrals to move them quickly into aggressive treatment.
Kingsbrook provides mammograms to over 2,500 women at its Women’s Wellness Center each year, including 326 women who are referred from the Brooklyn Healthy Living Partnership. However, Kingsbrook recognized the still unmet met need of African American women, new female immigrants and residents of the underserved neighborhoods of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Canarsie, Crown Heights, East New York, and Flatbush.
“This grant from the Komen Foundation is so very important to our breast cancer outreach efforts in the Central Brooklyn community, as it helps us close this severe service gap,” stated Debra Mabry. Assistant Vice President of Ambulatory Care Services at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center. “Now we can focus on increasing our mammography capacity at our current Women’s Wellness Center, offering additional blocks for mammography screenings and identifying minority women that are most in need.” As part of its program proposal, Kingsbrook will hire a full-time Breast Care Coordinator to provide education and outreach and coordinate breast health services.
Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center, celebrating its 83rd year, is an 864-bed teaching Medical Center, dedicated to meeting the health needs of one of Brooklyn’s most culturally diverse communities. Kingsbrook continues to implement programs and services that respond to the vital health needs and concerns of the community at large. Centers of Excellence Include: Kingsbrook Rehabilitation Institute offering Physical & Rehabilitative Medicine, including Brooklyn’s only New York State approved Traumatic Brain Injury & Coma Recovery Unit, an inpatient Geriatric Psychiatry Program, an outpatient Caribbean Community Mental Health Program, the Wound Healing & Hyperbaric Center, Orthopedic Surgery, a Women’s Wellness Center featuring Minimally- Invasive Gynecological Surgery and state of the art Digital Mammography. Other specialty areas include: Emergency Services, Ambulatory Surgery and a Certified Non-Invasive Vascular Laboratory, as well as a 538-bed Adult and Pediatric long term care facility. Kingsbrook and Rutland Nursing Home are JCAHO certified and not-for-profit members of the Greater New York Hospital Association and the Healthcare Association of New York State.
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