2024 has been quite the year for Northwest Indiana Breast Care Center at Methodist Hospitals. A few of the Breast Care Center’s recent accomplishments include putting on over 30 breast cancer awareness programs in the community, adding a new technologist to the mammography team, and screening over 1,200 new patients – and counting – this year alone.
2024 has been a very significant year for Jennifer Sanders, manager of the Northwest Indiana Breast Care Center at Methodist Hospitals, too. This month, Laini Fluellen Charities gave Sanders the Corporate Leadership Award in recognition of the great work she has done in breast cancer awareness outreach and leadership. Sanders has high hopes for the Breast Care Center’s future.
“We’re excited to see what 2025 has in store since 2024 has been so great,” Sanders said. “This year, we put on a new and very successful pap smear and mammo event. That event helped us identify some high-risk patients and supply them with genetic testing. We procured some wonderful new breast biopsy equipment this year, too. It’s both user and patient friendly, so our radiologists love it. We are excited about using it even more next year. We’re also looking forward to bringing in additional new equipment next year to expand our high-risk breast program, genetic testing services, and breast navigation services. I’m looking forward to helping our program move in the right direction.”
The Breast Care Center also received the Bears Cares grant once again this year. This Chicago Bears-sponsored program provides women in the community with much needed funding for their mammograms. This March, the Breast Care Center put on the Healthy Night Out For the Girls event, a health fair at which women could receive heart and vascular disease assessments, blood pressure screenings, and body mass index measurements. Sanders and her team also participated in other organizations’ events this year, like the Pink Ribbon Society’s Breast Cancer Awareness Tea which was held in September.
Whether she is at an event, or talking one-on-one with a patient, Sanders always stresses that getting screened annually is the best way to detect and treat breast cancer in its early stages.
“There is a 99% chance of surviving breast cancer if it’s caught early,” Sanders said. “Getting screened on an annual basis is the name of the game. We are able to catch breast cancer at stage one when our patients come in for their annual screenings, but we typically see stage three and four diagnoses in the cases of women who don’t get screened on a regular basis. A major misconception that some women have is that they don’t need to worry about getting breast cancer if there’s no history of it in their family. In fact, every year, about 75% to 80% of women diagnosed with breast cancer have no prior cases of it in their family history.”
The Breast Care Center has supported several fundraising events put on by Step Up 4 Inc., a community-focused breast cancer charity organization, within the past three-and-a-half years. These include a co-ed 16-inch softball tournament, a 1980s-themed party, and “Going Country for a Cure,” a concert that featured several local country artists. This year, the Breast Care Center helped support Step Up 4 Inc.’s “‘American Jukebox’ 4 Breast Cancer” music-through-the-ages fundraiser concert. This December, Step Up 4 Inc. will present the Breast Care Center with a $1000 check.
Bill Maio, CEO of Step Up 4 Inc., enjoys working with the Breast Care Center and feels that it is well worth investing in.
“The Breast Care Center staff are all understanding and caring people,” Maio said. “They have been very helpful at all of our events that they partner with us on. When they come out and support us at our events, they show that they are ready to volunteer their time and are enthusiastic about helping us out. They're very fun to work with. Our organization is committed to directly supporting women with breast cancer in our communities. It’s clear that the Breast Care Center Staff are just as passionate about doing that as we are.”
Sanders claims that she and the rest of the Breast Care Center staff are in a unique position to meaningfully support and engage with their patients.
“Our patient satisfaction scores have been in the 90th percentile since 2010, so it’s clear that our patients recognize and appreciate the hard work we do,” Sanders said. “We know that they are someone else’s mother, grandmother, sister, or daughter, so we treat them the way we would want our own family to be treated. We get to know them, learn about their kids or grandkids, and become friends with them. I think our team’s emotion, compassion, and empathy make us the perfect candidates to work with our patients. We want the women in our communities to know that we are here to help them. Our team is solid and we are here to answer all of their questions. They are not on this journey alone.”
For more information on Northwest Indiana Breast Care Center at Methodist Hospitals’ services and the best ways to maintain breast health, please visit methodisthospitals.org/services/breast-care-center-at-methodist-hospitals. You can additionally visit stepup4inc.org if you are interested in volunteering for or donating to Step Up 4 Inc. or if you would like to request breast cancer-related financial assistance.
