The Promise Fund Closes Gaps in Cancer Care for Women
- When caught early, survival rates in breast and cervical cancer are greater than 90%.
- Lack of access to screenings leads to later diagnoses or more advanced cancers.
- This young organization provides assistance and guidance to uninsured women in an effort to help better their chances of surviving cancer.
Read More"This is no longer about learning what we don't know, it's about applying what we do know," Brinker tells SurvivorNet. "It's not about actual medical care. It's about health equity."
Brinker's latest venture, The Promise Fund of Florida, which she founded in 2018 with Laurie Silvers and Julie Fisher Cummings, aims to create health equity for the women of Palm Beach County. The non-profit organization is on a mission to eliminate barriers to quality health care and reduce deaths from late stage breast and cervical cancer for county residents through early detection, diagnosis and treatment.
Breaking Down Barriers to Cancer Care
It's not a single barrier that lies between uninsured women and cancer care. It's many.
"We can't just send women for screening and then desert them," Brinker says. "What if they are positive for breast cancer? Now what are you going to do?"
Getting a woman the screening that leads to a breast cancer diagnosis is just the first step on a long road. After that, she'll need numerous health care appointments, which cost money and require transportation not to mention an understanding of English and the health care system.
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Brinker wants the Promise Fund to close each of those gaps.
The organization's bilingual patient navigators work with women to identify their barriers to getting care. They translate; help women apply for financial assistance and health insurance subsidies; and navigate the health care system with them from screening through diagnosis and treatment to ensure they complete their care without any additional obstacles.
The organization has also partnered with other non-profits and health care providers to offer screenings and health care at affordable rates. Uber Health gets women to their appointments.
In October, the Promise Fund will eliminate one more barrier between uninsured women and breast cancer screenings. The Promise Fund Mammography Screening Center will open inside FoundCare, a federally qualified health center in Palm Beach County. Women will then get mammograms at the same clinic where they receive basic primary care. This will eliminate the need for another appointment at another clinic appointments that many uninsured women never keep.
All Politics and Health Care are Local
After a lifetime promoting cancer research and health policy at the national level, Brinker has no aspirations to take this new initiative nationwide.
"I would just never want to grow a national organization again," she says. "I have determined now after all these years, all politics are local, so is all health care."
But she does want the Promise Fund to be a model for other states. Brinker anticipates that within a year, the organization's many programs will be running smoothly. "We want to make it as perfect as we can," she says.
At that point, she welcomes local health care advocates from any state to come to Palm Beach County and see how it's done so they can replicate the model in their own states.
"We've got to look at everything we've learned and figure out how to apply it to every population in our country," Brinker says. "We cannot leave out a part of our community."
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