Today President Bush signed a bill to reauthorize the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection program, an initiative that gets free breast and cervical cancer screenings to uninsured and low-income women.

I commend the leaders in the House and Senate for doing the right thing. But let’s hold our applause for now. The reauthorization is a critical first step in saving lives, but it alone does not solve the problem. That’s because under current funding levels, the program covers one in five eligible women. You read that right. Five women need the care. One will receive it.

That’s a problem. We know, and the Institute of Medicine confirms, that low-income women are three times more likely to die from breast cancer. Why? This same group is less likely to get screened and more likely to be diagnosed with late-stage cancer. The IOM also says uninsured women are also more likely to be diagnosed late and are 30 to 50 percent more likely to die from breast cancer than women with insurance.

In other words, we can prevent these deaths. We know how to do it. But again, we don’t do it.

The program works. Since it started more than a decade ago, the CDC, who runs the program in all 50 states, has screened more than 6.9 million women and found more than 29,000 breast cancers and 1,800 cervical cancers. You can read more about the program here.

We must close the gap between what we know works – early detection and access to care – and what we do – which unfortunately for the past several years has been to watch Congress and the Administration under fund this life-saving program.

The Congressional members who took the lead and fought for this program deserve our gratitude. All the members who voted for it deserve our thanks. But on behalf of all those women this program does not yet cover, we say, the job is not done.

LIVESTRONG,
Lance