Wednesday, March 28, 2012

STAND AGAINST CANCER


We had a news conference at the Church of Peace to launch a book in the Stand Against Cancer that was funded by the Susan G. Komen Quad Cities group.  The first photo is of Amy Westfall, from Komen.  After that is the news release that tells our story in detail.



The Stand Against Cancer Program (SAC) is an early breast and cervical cancer screening program that serves women 18 – 39 years of age, who are low income, uninsured, and reside in the state of Illinois.  The mission of the SAC program is to reduce racial and economic disparities in accessing these services by partnering with Federally Qualified Health Centers, health departments, faith-based and community-based organizations, the American Cancer Society and advocates in various regions of the state from Rock Island to Cairo (excluding the Chicago Metropolitan Area). The services provided by Stand Against Cancer are free of charge to eligible women.  The program is funded by the Illinois Department of Public Health Center for Minority Health Services and administered by the Springfield Urban League, Inc.

Since 2006, Nora Steele, Office Manager for Church of Peace, has acted as the local Advocate for the Stand Against Cancer program.  In her Advocate duties, Nora has passed out information at local fairs, events and at her daily job at the Church of Peace.  She educates women on the importance of early detection and provides women who are eligible for the SAC program with a referral to the local provider. The Church of Peace became a host of English as a Second Language classes through Black Hawk College two years ago.  With this responsibility, the doors opened to a new population in the community – the immigrant population.  Most of the women of this community have not seen doctors although they have had many children.  Mammograms and pap smears are not common words to them as they are to U.S. citizens.  Education has proven to be difficult because of the language barriers.  A better method of communication was needed, but difficult to address.

Nora and Church of Peace Parish Nurse, Mary Oelschlaeger, decided that a visual aid with limited verbage would help get the message to the women.  The question then was, how do we produce this visual aid?  It was decided that a book needed to be written with pictures, and it needed to be done professionally.  A grant was applied for through the Susan G. Komen Quad Cities group, and it was received.  A partnership was then formed with Augustana College’s Doug Tschopp who heads the graphic arts department and Kathy Conrad, Nursing Faculty at Trinity College of Nursing.  Kathy taught students who were able to provide the initial concept for the project as a part of classwork assignment.  Doug listened to what Nora and Mary wanted to do with the project and helped them walk through the process.  He determined that an illustrator needed to be hired to create some of the pictures that could not be copyrighted.  This person was found amongst the members of Church of Peace.  Barbara Crede agreed to help with the project, and it was on its way!

After the illustrator was finished with the pictures, everything was turned over to Augustana College student Joe Santucci under Doug Tschopp’s supervision.  Copies were tweaked here and there, and the book is finished and ready to be used for the Stand Against Cancer program.



Our hope is to have the book translated into several different languages to make it easier in talking with of the women of the immigrant community.  More grants will be written, and more partnerships will be formed!

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