The Avon Breast Cancer Crusade seeks to improve breast cancer outcomes and reduce disparities in survival rates at the community and national level. Our strategic grant making reflects: a holistic and place-based approach in high-need areas throughout the United States; a commitment to enabling access to medical advances and support services for breast cancer patients, particularly those from vulnerable populations; and a commitment to investing in research on the prevention, diagnostics, and treatment of breast cancer.

The Avon Breast Cancer Crusade focuses on care and seeks to help across the continuum of breast cancer – not only helping those who are at risk or diagnosed with the disease today, but also research into finding better treatments for tomorrow.

Santa Barbara 2016 Beneficiaries

• Dignity Health French Hospital received a grant of $50,000 to support their Breast Cancer Outreach and Navigation Program, which assists more than 500 low-income Latina women in San Luis Obispo North County. The program provides patients with a bilingual lay patient navigator, education and outreach in multiple languages, and free mammography clinics and diagnostic tests.
• Good Samaritan Hospital received a grant of $65,000 to provide patient navigation services to at least 200 women in Los Angeles. These funds will ensure that their diverse group of Spanish, Korean and English speaking patients receive culturally appropriate breast health education materials.
• San Antonio Regional Hospitalreceived a grant of $85,000 to develop strong relationships with young women diagnosed with breast cancer in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. The hospital’s nurse navigator will ensure that more than 100 women get timely diagnostic and treatment services when they need them.
• Cancer Center of Santa Barbara received a grant of $100,000 to continue their Breast Cancer Patient Navigation Program, which eliminates barriers to care that underserved women in Santa Barbara County often encounter when they seek breast health care. Over the next year, the Cancer Center will work with 650 patients to develop and maintain their treatment and survivorship plans.
• Northridge Hospital Foundation received a grant of $100,00 to provide more than 14,000 mammograms, navigate more than 1,500 women through diagnostic services, and support 150 women through cancer treatment and survivorship. The funds will also help Northridge Hospital Foundation expand its reach through the San Fernando Valley by providing Spanish-language education at churches, health fairs and breast support groups.
• University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine received a research grant of $100,000 to help the AVON Familial Breast and Ovarian Cancer Prevention Clinic continue to serve as a medical home for breast cancer screening and prevention for uninsured women in Los Angeles County, many of which are recent immigrants, who have an elevated inherited breast cancer risk.
• Project Angel Food, home of the Avon Center of Excellence, received a grant of $125,000 to support the delivery of 50,000 medically tailored meals to breast cancer patients in the Los Angeles area. Project Angel Food will also provide personalized nutrition counseling to 175 newly diagnosed breast cancer patients.
• YWCA of North Orange County, home of the Avon Center of Excellence, received a grant of $130,000 on behalf of the Breast Health Outreach Programs of Southern California to help thousands of women living in underserved communities learn about the importance of and options for screening, access to mammography care and any needed follow-up care and treatment.
• Paradigm Shift Therapeutics received a grant of $200,000 to assist in the development of a high-impact, affordable drug targeting a protein, CD47, in an effort to reduce metastatic breast cancer deaths. In addition, they will observe if existing drugs can block the development of CD47-related tumors in other organs in an effort to fast-track any potential new therapies.
• Cedars-Sinai Medical Center received a grant of $300,000 on behalf of Dr. Phillip Koeffler. Dr. Koeffler will examine various types of triple-negative breast cancer cells to determine if there are existing drugs that can address the gene mutations that cause this type of aggressive breast cancer.
• University of California at Los Angeles, home of the Avon Center of Excellence, received a grant of $750,000 to support the Avon Cares for Life program at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, Olive View Medical Center and its community clinics. This program will provide underserved women in Los Angeles with on-site patient navigation, survivorship support and access to the high-risk clinic and clinical trials research. In 2017, the program will expand its reach to include another hospital within the Department of Health Services in Los Angeles County.