10th Anniversary Public Service Announcement and Video Transcripts

U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher urges women to get screened for breast and cervical cancers by using health programs such as NBCCEDP.

Public Service Announcement (:30)
I'm David Satcher, U.S. Surgeon General. Whether you're living in Anchorage, Alaska, or Zebulon, Georgia, there's a special program for women aged forty or older. Even if you don't have health insurance or Medicare, you can still get free screening exams for breast and cervical cancer. Health agencies in your community can provide you with a mammogram and Pap test through a program funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I urge you to find a program near you.

Public Service Announcement (:60)
I'm David Satcher, U.S. Surgeon General. Whether you're living in Anchorage, Alaska, or Zebulon, Georgia, there's a special program for women aged forty or older. Even if you don't have health insurance or Medicare, you can still get free screening exams for breast and cervical cancer. Health agencies in your community can provide you with a mammogram and Pap test through a program funded by the CDC.

Early detection is your best defense against breast and cervical cancers. For more information about the CDC's National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program, and where you can receive free screening exams, call 1-888-842-6355, and select option 7. I encourage you to call today and help save lives by screening for breast and cervical cancer.

10th Anniversary Video Transcript

This video covers the different components of NBCCEDP and offers partners, women's health organizations, and the public a chance to understand this extraordinary program and its importance to women. Included is footage from national programs, photographs, and interviews with people who have guided the Program from inception to its current standing.

Charlie, diagnosed 1984: When you have cancer, it affects more than you. It affects your family, your dreams. It is a financial responsibility. And all these things add up.

On-Screen Fact: Since 1990, the CDC's breast and cervical cancer program has provided over two million screening tests to underserved women.

Video theme music and roll footage of program promotions

Female: This program uses a variety of components. It uses outreach. It uses education of women. Importantly, it educates providers to understand how they can reach out to women, how they can provide better services, how they can assure the quality of their services.

Male: My mom died of breast cancer, and there were a lot of barriers for her to access screening services.

Peter Jennings, Reporter, ABC News (1991): There is a new effort underway, or at least getting underway, to control the number of breast cancer cases through early detection. It is aimed specifically at women who have no health insurance.

Excerpt Television Commercial: If you have low or moderate income or not enough insurance, it can be hard to pay for that annual mammogram.

Female: Talk to your daughter, your mother or a friend about mammograms, and about Pap tests.

Female: If you know one black woman who has had breast cancer, that's one too many.

Moderator: The Gift of Tales video has been shown to natives across the state of Alaska. It tells the story of breast health in a way uniquely relevant to native culture.

Wanna: More women continue to live meaningful lives because their breast cancer was discovered and treated early.

Jo Stand: Early detection of breast cancer can be a key to successful recovery.

Moderator: Bilingual volunteers help women through the screening process and Spanish-language media is spreading the word about breast health.

Dr. David Satcher, Surgeon General: As we move into the 21st century, it will become increasingly important for public health organizations, as well as private agencies, and volunteer organizations to form non-traditional public/private partnerships in order to both extend and enrich our services for under-served communities.

Moderator: To serve the thousands of Latino women living in Chicago, "Y-Me" established its Latino Outreach and Community Health Program in the fall of 1994. The self-help and advocacy work of the Black Women's Health Project takes information to churches, beauty shops, and homes of women in their communities.

Female: Hi Pat. I'm sorry I'm late but I'm glad I'm here.

Pat: Oh, I'm glad you're here also.

First Lady, Mrs. Laura Bush: "Tell A Friend Friday Campaign." Share this life-saving message with your mother, your sisters, and all of your friends.

Female: I believe in what I'm doing. And personally, I believe somebody is listening.

Female: The message of early detection. If I can get women to understand that you have to do early detection, then then I've done my job.

The Witness Project Spokeswoman: We're gonna keep doing what we're doing and try to make it better.

Margaret C. Mendez, MPA, Director, Texas State Programs: The core of the program is really screening. The intent of the program is to reduce mortality. Fundamentally, what we do is we contract with some really important, critical people at different agencies, local health departments, YWCAs, hospitals and medical centers to deliver services.

Stephen W. Wyatt, DMD, MPH, Division of Cancer Prevention and Control, CDC: Clearly one of the keys with the national program was leadership at the state level. This was really the first community-based, state-based health department cancer control effort in the United States.

Margaret Mendez: What we've done is try and reach women who are really not accessing any health-care services at all and trying to be a little bit more innovative.

Dr. Jeffrey P. Koplan, Director, CDC: The National Breast and Cervical Cancer Program has become a model for all chronic disease prevention programs. It's taken research that's been done over many decades and put it into the field to the benefit of the health of women of this country.

Rosemarie Henson, MPH, MSSW, Chief, Program Services, Branch, CDC: There have been lots of resources put into individual outreach where states and their partners go into the community and recruit women into screening. The ultimate goal is to reduce morbidity and mortality and it doesn't do anyone any good to screen a woman once.

Margaret Mendez: We have women who don't have immediate access to health services, and particularly Hispanic woman and African-American women and other ethnicities in different parts of the state.

Stephen Wyatt: The challenge is to continue to increase access for more women. Where clearly the program is reaching a substantial portion of women now, but it's certainly not all the women that are eligible for the program nationally. And so, resources to continue to expand the pool of women that can access the program annually is really, really important.

Ruth Katz, JD, MPH, Assoc. Dean, Yale University School of Medicine: But I think you have to always come back to the individual women that have been aided by this program. This is a program that has made a real difference for real people.

Video theme music and roll footage

On-Screen Text: The CDC wishes to express its deepest gratitude to the state health departments, territories, and tribal organizations that are the core of this program. Special thanks to all of the federal, private, voluntary, and community-based partners whose support has been so valuable.

Credits