An Innovative Program to Prevent and Screen for Breast and Ovarian Cancers
In the United States last year, 55,000 women lost their lives to Ovarian and Breast Cancer and almost 300,000 new cases were diagnosed. The impact of these diagnosis to women, families and communities is devastating, life altering and traumatic for everyone touched by these calamitous diseases. Tragically, vast amounts of the cancers are still being detected at late stages, with daunting survival rates, particularly for Ovarian Cancer patients. A study was recently published demonstrating that Ovarian Cancer patients, on average, have had the disease for more than 24 months and have seen more than 4 doctors – without a diagnosis. Women are counting on their primary care physician or specialist to help them with symptoms that are mild and are whispering – but that do not seemingly point to a disease state, or at least one that they are trained to identify. Breast and Ovarian Cancer have a myriad of signs, symptoms, risk factors to include genetics and family history – and it is an artful skill putting the pieces of those stories together to make a proper diagnosis or proper referral.
We have not solved for this problem – until now. In June of this year, Greenwich will be launching a cutting edge program for Breast and Ovarian Early Detection and Prevention called the MAT Certification, powered by Yale New Haven Health and Discovery to Cure and in partnership with executive leadership from the Town of Greenwich, YWCA, Breast Cancer Alliance and the UJA-JCC.
MAT represents the initials of our own Greenwich resident, Kaile Josephs Zaggers’ mother, the late, Marilyn Ann Trahan (Josephs), who succumbed to Ovarian Cancer at the young age of 46. The certification program named for her, is a rigorous curriculum that has been constructed across many pillars from genetics to imaging to segmentation of the population, to understand how to screen and manage potential high-risk patients or people that are presenting with low grade symptoms that are seemingly unidentifiable. This first in-kind curriculum, is accompanied by an exam in which physicians of varying specialties must pass, in order to achieve MAT Certification.
