The staff at The Next Door Inc with SUP 4 Cancer's Director, Tonia Farman

SUP 4 Cancer and John Wayne Cancer Foundation gave The Next Door $21,000 today for their breast cancer outreach program, Nuestra Comunidad Sana. The Next Door ran our silent auction beautifully with some amazing products, services, and generous support from all over the Pacific Northwest! On top of that, the  Kite and SUP 4 Cancer athletes raised $73,000 for various cancer programs throughout the northwest, $42,000 of which were matched by the John Wayne Cancer Foundation. SUP 4 Cancer chose Nuestra Comunidad Sana for its impactful grass-roots prevention program in the Columbia Gorge community.

The Next Door ran the SUP4C and KB4C silent auction beautifully!!

The purpose of Nuestras Comunidad Sana/Our Healthy Community is to comprehensively address the need to increase the survival rate of women with breast cancer for rural, low-income, under-served women in the Mid-Columbia region (central border area between Oregon and Washington) and provide needed support to women being screened for breast cancer and improve cancer survivors’ quality of life.

For the past several years, NCS’ Health Promoters have been successful in overcoming gender, social and cultural barriers to promote breast health among Latino community members. In order to continue to be agents of change in the Mid-Columbia region, the need to raise breast health awareness and provide outreach is essential for its community members. It is important that all women receive regular screenings and that all men and women accept breast health as an entitlement!

The uniqueness of the program comes from the use of Health Promoters, community residents who are specifically trained by an NCS Lead Health Promoter to reach their community with the program’s message.  This combination of health education and leadership development has been the foundation of all NCS programs and has been directly responsible for not only NCS’ ability to reach thousands of people each year but also with helping to sustain the program over the past nine years.  No matter how funding support to NCS ebbs and flows, there remains a cadre of trained and dedicated community health promoters who continue to lead the effort to educate, support and advocate for their neighbors.

The NCS program has four main activity areas:

1)     General outreach through radio Public Service Announcements, Mothers Day and Fathers Day mammogram reminder cards and general large scale outreach to big groups about the importance of early detection—our annual target is usually around 3,000 people

2)     One-on-one outreach to women and men at work, in their homes, in church, at health fairs—through presentations or just talking one-on-one to 400 men and 400 women.

3)     Screening assistance—teaching how to do self-exams, helping people get clinical breast exams and mammograms (transportation, childcare, interpretation, translation of results and any follow-up) for 100 women (we assist some English speaking women with this as well).

4)     Breast cancer survivor support group meeting monthly for 5-8 women.

Thank you to all the athletes and donors of SUP 4 Cancer for making this happen!!! This is an amazing program in our community!  For more information on Nuestras Mujeres Sanas, check out their website, http://nextdoorinc.org/.