Jill Biden Joins Washington Area Anchorwomen to Raise Funds for Georgetown’s Capital Breast Care Center
Posted in GUMC Stories | Tagged breast cancer, cancer, Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Prevention
(February 8, 2019) — On a rainy Wednesday night, a sea of pink descended upon D.C.’s wharf for the annual 2019 NewsBash event.
The breast cancer charity founded by Washington-area women in broadcasting, held its tenth annual fundraising event February 6, and organizers say it was their most successful yet.
Former second lady of the United States Jill Biden joined supporters, survivors, politicos and friends who came together to help raise awareness for breast cancer and raise funds for this year’s beneficiary, Capital Breast Care Center (CBCC).
CBCC’s mission is to provide community outreach and patient navigation services for cancer prevention and early detection, including screenings and diagnostics utilizing evidence-based health and wellness education practices to underserved women in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.
The CBCC ‘family’ was out in force at the event. Sylvia Jackson, a cancer survivor and now a volunteer for CBCC, said the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center program saved her life.
In 2014, Jackson went for a mammogram and when the results came back clear she says she felt that something was still “not quite right going on with my breast.” She called CBCC for advice. Sylvia was assigned a patient navigator who supported her through every step of a repeat mammogram and biopsy.
She was given a positive diagnosis of breast cancer but says the silver lining was that it was caught at an early stage.
“I had surgery but was lucky,” said Jackson. “I didn’t have to have chemo because it was caught so early. I’m thankful that I listened to my body.”
Sylvia volunteers with the Capital Breast Care Center now. “That phone call saved my life. The CBCC are like family to me now.”
Rhonda Hamilton, a patient navigator at CBCC, says “it’s important that people know that when they call CBCC, that there’s somebody on the other end of the line who really cares.”
Hamilton has worked at CBCC for five years and says that if she could tell women one thing, “It would be to emphasize how critically important annual mammograms are.”
Hamilton, Jackson and the rest of the CBCC team were delighted to meet the NewsBash guest of honor before the event. Introduced as a ’favorite member of the vice squad,’ former second lady of the United States Jill Biden spoke about how her own family dealt with cancer. Biden and her husband, former Vice President Joe Biden, lost their son Beau to brain cancer in 2015.
It’s broken our hearts and stolen our joy,” Biden said.
As an ardent supporter of the NewsBash event over the last 10 years, she then turned to the crowd saying, “I’d like to raise a glass… for the female journalists here tonight who have raised money for breast cancer over the last 10 years.”
The night was capped off with the announcement that NewsBash 2019 raised a total of $50,000 for Capital Breast Care Center.