[gentle guitar and piano music]
My name is Faye Wong, and I'm Chief of the Program Services Branch
in the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control at CDC.
I am Captain Jacqueline Miller.
I am the Medical Director for the National Breast
and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program here at CDC.
Congress in 1990 realized that there was a problem that low income
uninsured women were dying more of breast and cervical cancer.
So the Breast and Cervical Cancer Mortality Prevention Act was passed
in order for CDC to implement a program to provide breast
and cervical cancer screening and diagnostic services to these women.
And at that point, all we had was
Public Law 101-354
that established the program legislatively by Congress.
And the program itself did not exist.
So the original management team for the program
basically had to build the entire program from scratch.
The program started in 1991, screened the first women
and started with about three programs initially,
and by 1994 we were up to all states.
I think was sixty four programs at the time.
We eventually got to sixty seven programs
and in 2017 we got to seventy programs.
We fund all of the seventy programs across the U.S.,
and they actually are out there doing the day-to-day work, making the personal contact with women.
You have to understand what the needs are.
Everybody's not the same.
So we have to make sure we're reaching the women where they are,
and making sure they understand, and making them feel comfortable
at being able to come in and get the services.
It's a big thing to make sure that you're just not coming with one message
to all women, and that you're having catered messages and catered activities,
to the women to meet the women where they are.
I've been with the program for the thirty years since it started.
Some of the challenges the program have
is sometimes identifying their at-need populations.
Even for many of the programs who've been funded through the thirty years,
they've had the realization that they needed
sometimes to go back and reassess who their population was,
because that's changed over the years in different areas, in different regions.
There are many populations, especially those who are racial,
ethnic minority groups that distrust the health care system.
And the way our programs deal with it
is things like hiring staff who are from those populations,
hiring staff that speak the language,
contracting with clinics that are located in the community where they live
so they're not traveling downtown to a fancy building
that's totally intimidating.
I think that one of the things that the program, the dedication
of the people in the states, really makes a difference.
When you can have a person who can call someone on their cell phone
fearful of cancer,
and they can say, I'll call you tomorrow and get you into a doctor's
office tomorrow. That makes a difference for people.
A very important thing for our programs across
the country is to partner with community-based organizations
that are connected to the women in the community to identify
the ones that perhaps need to be screened but have not been screened.
At the heart of everything, I think, is our awardees know their population.
And because they know their population, they implement interventions
that make sense.
We have programs who work with specific groups
in their community, in their jurisdictions that are the low income,
who don't get the services, and they will work with those community people
who work with the program to get to those women.
If it's transportation, to bring them to a service,
you know, we do that.
If it's setting up mobile vans to their community so they can
access the service. We do that.
We even have tribal programs who drive their cars
to people's homes to pick them up, to bring them to services.
And we start with the screening all the way to getting you
into treatment services.
And we assist women with getting onto those treatment programs.
The people that work in the program are usually people
who are very passionate about breast and cervical cancer.
They're passionate about the women they serve.
They're passionate about the quality of the program
and making sure that women are connected.
They're committed, dedicated to doing the best job they can.
They care. I think that's the bottom line.
Well, I think any time you give a woman an opportunity to take care of herself
and her health, you're not only affecting her, you're affecting her family
and all of those in the community that are connected to her.
Any time you can give a woman access to screenings
that could potentially save her life, it's very impactful.