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Alamo Breast Cancer Foundation Patient Advocate Program |
In 1997, the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium directors, Charles A. Coltman,Jr. and C. Kent Osborne,MD, requested that the Alamo Breast Cancer Foundation develop, organize and facilitate an advocate program in conjunction with the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. The directors saw the need for an advocate program because of the increasing Symposium attendance of advocates and the absence of specific planned activities to acknowledge their presence and their interest in breast cancer research. With encouragement and support from the Symposium directors, the first Advocate Program was held in December 1998.
The Alamo Breast Cancer Foundation's Patient Advocate Program is designed to increase the dissemination of the latest breast cancer research findings from the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium to advocates throughout the United States and other countries. This is accomplished by breast cancer advocates applying for a scholarship to attend the SABCS. Our scholarship advocates are expected to attend the lectures, poster sessions and the Mentor Sessions held each evening. They are assigned a specific lecture session or poster session and are required to complete a report (Hot Topic) from that talk. The deadline for these reports is one month after the end of the SABCS. The reports are assembled into book form after being checked thoroughly for accuracy. These books are distributed to all advocates who wrote the reports, our funders, mentors, and any other interested parties. The Hot Topic book is one of the few sources that have wrap-ups of all of the lectures from the SABCS.
- In order to qualify for a scholarship, the advocate must:
- 1.Complete application by deadline and submit (all done online)
2.Have a basic knowledge of cancer and research (such as graduate of Project LEAD)
3.Belong to a breast cancer organization
4.Have been out of treatment one year
5.Attend all sessions, mentor sessions and orientation dinner.
To date, ABCF has funded 153 advocates with another 32 attending in 2003. We have also circulated 5 Hot Topic books and had 5 Breast Cancer Update forums in San Antonio for the community.
For more information about the Alamo Breast Cancer Foundation, please visit our website at www.alamobreastcancer.org
Submitted by
Sandi Stanford
For ABCF
December 1, 2003
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