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Andrea
Ivory |
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Andrea Ivory
49 - Miami, FL
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"I know that I was saved from breast cancer to serve. I am committed to helping eradicate breast cancer as a life threatening disease, one household at a time."
As a breast cancer survivor, Andrea Ivory knows firsthand that early detection is the key to saving lives. During her recovery, she often thought about the women who died because the problem wasn’t detected early enough. Her vision, realized in Florida Breast Health Initiative (FBHI), was an organization that reached women where they lived, providing mobile door-to-door outreach, delivering mammography resources in their neighborhoods.
Annually, breast cancer kills more than 42,000 women in the U.S., and one out of every eight women will develop breast cancer. In Miami-Dade County, nearly 600,000 residents lack health insurance and access to the early detection mammography screenings.
FBHI targets its outreach efforts to working-poor neighborhoods with high incidences of late-stage breast cancer and uninsured households. Hundreds of volunteers are recruited and trained to go door-to-door, providing early detection guidelines with educational and promotional materials about breast health. The materials provide a list of sites that offer free or low-cost mammograms to the uninsured.
Andrea designed FBHI’s ""take it to the street"" approach to deliver these resources to those who can't access necessary breast screenings and/or treatment. The resulting neighborhood buzz around breast health encourages women to receive educational resources and screenings in their own neighborhoods.
FBHI was established in 2005. In the two years since Andrea began the outreach program (2006), more than 12,000 households have received breast educational materials, and more than 35 percent of them have opened their doors to receive breast health education. And to date, over three hundred free screening mammograms have been provided for uninsured women and more than 500 were actually scheduled.
Additionally, FBHI collaborates with local hospitals to provide free or low-cost additional screening and treatment.
That's why Andrea is a 2008
Woman Of Worth. |
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"I am committed to helping eradicate breast cancer."
Hear Andrea discuss her work
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ORGANIZATION
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