Black women have the highest rates of death compared to women of any other ethnicity when it comes to breast and cervical cancer. The Cennters for Disease Control and Preven-tion finds that Black and White women get diagnosed with breast cancer at the same rate, but that Black women are 42% more likely to die from it. In Florida, that number is 52% according to the Florida Department of Health. In Broward County, the number is 56%. In cervical cancer diagnoses, the 5-year survival rate for Black women is 58% compared with 71% for White women, even though it is one of the most highly preventable and treatable diseases.

Brenda August knows she is one of the lucky ones. In July 2020, the 60-year-old West Palm Beach resident saw a visible lump in her right breast. Having been laid off years prior, Au-gust had no insurance to get the lump checked. It had been three years since her last mammogram. Thank-fully, her daughter, a nurse at Found-Care in West Palm Beach, knew exactly how to help her.

Through a subsidized program by the Promise Fund of Florida at Found-Care, August got the lump examined. Promise Fund helped provide August with a mammogram, ultrasound, and biopsy of the lump. Doctors diag-nosed her with stage 2 breast cancer. A lumpectomy followed in September 2020. August has now been cancer free for more than a year.

Promise Fund of Florida’s mission is to reduce the number of late-stage breast and cervical cancer deaths by eliminating barriers to quality health-care for uninsured and underserved women in South Florida, including ac-cess to breast and cervical screen-ings. They’ve found besides finances, some of the biggest barriers to care are socioeconomic issues, including transportation difficulties, the need for translation, finding childcare, the inability to take time off work, and in-sufficient education on the critical im-portance of routine screenings.

So far, the nonprofit has helped screen, educate, or navigate more than 15,000 local women through health provider partnerships like FoundCare, where they also funded the Promise Fund of Florida Mam-mography Screening Center. Their goal this year is to serve 30,000 women by 2023. Almost all of the women the Promise Fund of Florida have navigated over the past several years have been women of color with more than 32% identifying themselves as Black or African-American.