January 4, 2007
Safeway funds high-tech mammography clinic
A gift of $800,000 from the Seattle Division of Safeway Inc. to the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) will bring a mobile mammography clinic with the latest diagnostic technology tools to women who may not otherwise be screened for breast cancer.
Greg Sparks, president of Safeway’s Seattle Division, announced the gift Dec. 8 at a Safeway store on Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill. Sparks displayed a check representative of the funds raised through a companywide campaign and presented an artist’s conception of the mobile clinic.
“We’ve been looking forward to this day for quite some time,” Sparks said. “Our contribution is a true reflection of the passion our employees and customers have for bridging the gap between research and a cure for breast cancer. Providing funds to purchase a mobile mammography van allows all our contributors the opportunity to see our dollars at work.”
Starting in 2007, the clinic on wheels will reach women who lack easy access to mammograms due to difficulties with transportation, child care, work or other issues. The van, which will accommodate up to 35 women a day, is designed to fill a critical need by significantly increasing the number of women being screened with digital mammography.
The clinic will be equipped with the most up-to-date digital technology, allowing mammograms to be transmitted via satellite to SCCA and UW physicians for interpretation. Receiving a mammogram aboard a mobile clinic typically takes between 15 and 20 minutes.
Digital mammography can detect up to 28 percent more cancers than the traditional film method in certain groups of women. Those groups include young women and those with dense breast tissue, women who have not yet reached menopause, and women under 50.
The mobile mammography clinic will be directed by Dr. Connie Lehman, who also directs breast imaging at the SCCA and the Department of Radiology at the UW School of Medicine.
“We are extremely grateful to Safeway for its generous and visionary support of breast-cancer diagnosis and treatment,” Lehman said. “With this project, Safeway provides more women with the opportunity to be screened through digital mammography, the most advanced technology for detection of breast cancer. We know that early detection is critical to improving overall survival rates for breast and other cancers. If breast cancer is detected early, the five-year survival rate is more than 98 percent.”
Annual mammography screening is recommended for women 40 and older. Washington state has the highest per-capita incidence of breast cancer in the United States, yet many women in the state do not receive annual mammograms.
