NELSON: ♫ I am a living testimony ♫
♫ I could have been dead and gone ♫
♫ but, Lord, you let me live on ♫
♫ oh, oh, oh, I, I am ♫
CONLEY: Without this program, I might not have gotten treatment.
NELSON: They are benefiting us. Oh, are they benefiting us.
CONLEY: I really wish all women knew about our program.
NELSON: ♫ I'm still alive ♫♫
SMITH: From the very beginning, this program,
you know, was challenged to find,
you know, a way to work directly with states
and administer a complicated program that also meant
that they had to identify women who were eligible for screening
and get that apparatus into place.
HENSON: We started to see women screened, which was amazing.
We saw states got their programs implemented,
started screening women, and what was so exciting was,
we really were reaching those women that were underserved.
PLESCIA: Particularly, when the program was matched up
to the state and federal Medicaid program,
it meant the people not only were able to get screened,
but then, if they tested positive for cancer,
they had an assured source of treatment, and that's huge.
NILSON: We're all working towards the same thing --
is getting low-income women with
little or no health insurance or inadequate health insurance
into the program, to be able to get them screened.
CONLEY: Finding the BCC program was really a lifeline for me.
At that time, being uninsured, no money, not even a job,
and my husband out of work, it was really tough,
to imagine that I could get treatment for cancer.
I had no resources.
NELSON: There was a team of them I had,
of people that didn't like cancer and they went after it,
like I say, with the tenacity of a pit bull.
So you need people like this on your side
when you're going through something.
CONLEY: Without this program, I might not have gotten treatment.
And if I had gotten treatment, it would've been
very costly for me and it really would've affected me
in a negative way the rest of my life.
Instead, I was given this miracle.
You know, I really wish all women knew about our program.
HENSON: We started a tribal program.
And the reason for that was that the state health agencies
weren't as successful, in terms of reaching out
to American Indian and Alaska Native women
and so that was another very big success for us.
JOE: There was no screening available,
like, 10, 15 years ago.
And we have lots of community members
that come forward, you know,
and tell us their story about losing their loved ones
and they wish that the program was there
at that time when they lost their mom --
otherwise, you know -- and they're very supportive.
BAUER: The National Breast and Cervical Cancer
Early Detection Program is at a crossroads right now
and it has a tremendous opportunity with
the Affordable Care Act to really serve as a model for how
we deliver clinical preventive services in this country.
The program has worked for the last 20 years to perfect
a process of working with the healthcare system
to ensure the delivery of cancer screening services
and outreach to the public to build demand for those services.
WILLIAMS: Over the past 20 years,
the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program
has built an infrastructure around the country --
not just screening, but quality improvement,
patient navigation, case management.
And all of these things will be important --
probably more important as more people
become insured under health reform.
WONG: There's going to be 32 million more people who
will have access to insurance, that don't have it now,
but nothing else changes about them.
They still need to know that they need screening.
They still need to have
the fears they have about screening addressed.
They still need to have their barriers, such as
transportation and language barriers, addressed, and so on.
So, when it comes to the future,
I think the role will be much bigger,
it's just that we will be doing our work
differently than we do it right now.
HAYES: Just to talk to one person
whose life may have been saved because of the fact that they
were screened through this program and that,
where they had cancer, they were able to access treatment,
and, to me, that's the ultimate value of it all
and I'm just very proud to be a part of it.
NELSON: ♫ Oh, oh, oh, I ♫
♫ I am ♫
♫ I'm a living testimony ♫
♫ and every day I ♫
♫ I thank the Lord that I'm still alive ♫♫