PITTSBURGH LEADERSHIP MINI-SUMMIT ON BREAST CANCER

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Breast cancer continues to be a major health problem in the United States, in particular for African American women. In fact, African American women under the age of 50 years have the highest number of newly diagnosed breast cancers. In addition, 52% of Caucasian American women are diagnosed with localized breast cancer versus 43% of the breast cancer diagnosed in African American women. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, there were 338 African American deaths from cancer in Allegheny County during 1990. This is higher than the Pennsylvania rate (311/100,000) and the United States rate of 270/100,000 population. Twenty-two percent of the female deaths were attributable to breast cancer. The primary goal of the proposed Mini-Summit titled, "Pittsburgh Leadership Mini-Summit: The Challenge of Breast Cancer," is to educate, motivate and collaborate with community and health care organizations to establish breast cancer education and early detection programs for African American women residing in Allegheny County, who are at increased risk for developing breast cancer. Developing, implementing, and evaluating breast cancer awareness and early detection programs that will be accessible for this difficult to reach population will contribute to the mission of health promotion and cancer prevention goals of the Healthv People 2000 priority. This goal will be met by identifying and bringing together key leaders who can collaborate to plan and implement community-based breast cancer education and early detection programs; identify currently available resources and describe the barriers unique to African American women in Allegheny County that prevent them from fully utilizing the available breast cancer resources. It is hoped that the Mini-Summit will motivate the identified intermediaries to communicate and engage in activities that will permit reaching the ultimate goal of decreasing the morbidity and mortality from breast cancer in African American women in Allegheny County.