Extra Safety Steps for Breast Cancer Screenings in Place; Don’t Wait!

Wilma Green is no stranger to change and having the world change overnight. Originally from New Orleans, the 67-year-old grandmother and New Orleans native was displaced from her home to Baton Rouge following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She faced hardship again in 2016, when her home in the Millerville Road-area neighborhood flooded, and she was again displaced for six months. One constant in Wilma’s life has been Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center’s Prevention on the Go services. Since 2013, Wilma has received her cancer preventative services at a mobile unit that travels to her neighborhood. This year, though, Wilma was worried about how she would be able to safely access her usual yearly breast cancer screening. “With the pandemic, I was scared to go,” she says. But then she got a call from a staff member from the Cancer Center letting her know that they would be in her neighborhood. “The staff assured me that extra safety precautions were in place,” Wilma says. “It eased my fears.” She was relieved when her appointment went smoothly, and her screening results were normal – no cancer detected. The Cancer Center partners with Woman’s Hospital to provide breast cancer screenings and mammograms throughout the region. In 2018, the collaborative expertise provided by the Cancer Center and Woman’s Hospital expanded with the opening of the Breast & GYN Cancer Pavilion. Because of generous community support, which covers the cost of Prevention on the Go, Wilma and thousands of others like her can rest easy knowing essential cancer screenings are still easily accessible. To learn more about the precautions the Cancer Center is taking or for more information about the Cancer Center’s Prevention on the Go community program, click here or call (225) 215-1234.