ATTACHED PHOTO CAPTION:

Candyce Lindsay, Board of Directors Vice-President, Fiona Howard, Becky Howard, Project Lead Arizona Myeloma Network, Barbara B. Kavanagh,  MSW, Founder/President of the Arizona Myeloma Network, which was awarded a Breast Cancer Awareness and Prevention Training Program Grant by the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and Kay Thompson, Board of Directors Grant Chair.

PHOTO CREDIT:  Courtesy of the Susan G. Komen Foundation

For Immediate Release
Contact: Barbara B. Kavanagh, MSW
 Founder/President
Arizona Myeloma Network
 623.388.6837
 azmyelomanetwork@cox.net

Arizona Myeloma Network Receives $26,600 from Phoenix Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure® to Provide Breast Cancer Education in the Native American Community

PHOENIX –(March 19, 2009) – In a time when funds are being cut from vital programs across the country, the Phoenix Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure® is granting $2.6 million – its largest amount ever – to breast cancer screening, education, treatment and research. More than $2.1 million will stay in the community, funding 33 nonprofit organizations throughout central and northern Arizona.

The Arizona Myeloma Network, AzMN, has been awarded $26,600 to fund the Dine Breast Cancer Awareness and Prevention Training Program for the Navajo Nation. The Dine Breast Cancer Program will train Navajo women to reach out to breast cancer patients and their families and provide information about mammograms and other prevention and screening resources available for women and famlies on the Reservation.
This is the 1st year that the Arizona Myeloma Network has received a Komen grant.

AzMN, and the additional grantees were recognized at Komen’s annual “Fulfilling the Promise” luncheon on Thursday, March 26 at the Tempe Center for the Arts. The invitation-only event featured Arizona Governor, Jan Brewer, as a special guest speaker. It  also honored the organization’s dedicated volunteers and supporters.

“We are honored to have the opportunity to provide this much needed education and prevention training program to the Navajo community at Navajo Nation. And, we are also grateful to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure for providing us with the funding to help ‘women’ to help other women with breast cancer and bring new hope to cancer patients and survivors on the Reservation.”

The community grants program allows the Komen Phoenix Affiliate to carry out its mission of saving lives and ending breast cancer forever throughout medically underserved communities. Up to 75 percent of net proceeds generated by the Phoenix Affiliate’s annual Race for the Cure and other programs stay within the service area of central and northern Arizona. The remaining 25 percent funds the national Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer research program.

“Our grants program is the absolute juncture of where the rubber meets the road,” says Candyce Lindsay, Grants Director of the Komen Phoenix Affiliate. “The funds that are raised by the Race for the Cure by this community are going directly to the community where the need has been defined.”

The Komen Phoenix Affiliate’s annual community grants program awards funds to non-profit organizations that provide innovative, non-duplicative breast health and breast cancer services directly to the medically underserved, uninsured or underinsured. The services must be provided within the Phoenix Affiliate’s service area, which includes Apache, Coconino, Gila, La Paz, Maricopa, Mohave, Navajo, Pinal and Yavapai counties.

In addition to the $2,133,226 in local grants, the Komen Phoenix Affiliate has also granted $550,000 to the national Susan G. Komen for the Cure Research Grants Program, bringing its 2009/2010 contribution to over $2.6 million. Of these funds, $550,000 was awarded to research programs, $150,235 to education programs, $748,660 to screening programs and $1,234,331 to treatment programs. Since its inception in 1993, the Komen Phoenix Affiliate has granted more than $16 million – making it the largest private grantor of breast cancer funds in Arizona.

The organization’s primary fundraiser is its annual Komen Phoenix Race for the Cure®, which is held each October and is the largest 5k event in Arizona. The 2008 event drew 31,500 participants and raised a record $2 million. The seventeenth annual Race will be held on Sunday, Oct. 11 in the State Capitol District in Phoenix. For more information, please visit www.komenphoenix.org.

About the Phoenix Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure®
Nancy G. Brinker promised her dying sister, Susan G. Komen, she would do everything in her power to end breast cancer forever. In 1982, that promise became Susan G. Komen for the Cure® and launched the global breast cancer movement. The Phoenix Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure®—along with those who generously support us with their talent, time and resources—is working to better the lives of those facing breast cancer in our community. We join more than 100,000 breast cancer survivors and activists around the globe as part of the world’s largest and most progressive grassroots network fighting breast cancer. Through events like the Susan G. Komen Phoenix Race for the Cure®, we have invested over $16 million in local breast health and breast cancer awareness projects in the nine counties of Central and Northern Arizona, and in vital breast cancer research. Up to 75 percent of all funds generated by Komen Phoenix stay in the local area while the remaining income goes to Komen for the Cure’s Grants Program supporting research, awards and educational and scientific programs around the world. Join us by calling 602-544-CURE (2873) or visiting us online at www.komenphoenix.org.

About the Arizona Myeloma Network
The Arizona Myeloma Network was founded by Barbara Kavanagh, MSW, in 2006,to help myeloma patients like her husband, so that they wouldn’t feel alone and helpless, as they had felt when he was diagnosed in the early 1990’s. Their dream was to provide hope and help to myloma patients and families in Arizona. Myeloma is a  rare bone marrow cancer, often misdiagnosed,  that affects more than 1500 men and women each month in the U.S. Though there is no cure, new research and treatments have extended lives and improved the quality of life for myeloma patients. AzMN’s mission is to reach out to all myeloma patients, families, caregivers , with special concern for the underserved, who are so often lost and overwhelmed by the diagnosis of cancer. And, in the past year, AzMN has extended their programs and services to other cancer groups because by working together, ‘we can help one another’ find better treatment, and hopefully, a ‘cure’!
For more information on AzMN and the Dine Breast Cancer Awareness and Prevention Training Program and other AzMN events and services, visit our website at:
www.azmyelomanetwork.org