Mercy Medical Center Gets $30K To Support Breast Health

For the third consecutive year, Pink Aid has awarded Mercy Medical Center’s Radiology and Imaging Center with a grant to support breast health services for the uninsured and underinsured on Long Island. This year’s grant, for $30,000, supports complimentary breast cancer screenings, breast biopsies, secondary screenings and more.

“Knowing that our grants are helping women, who often put everyone else before themselves, to put their health, as it relates to breast cancer, first has been so rewarding,” said Pink Aid of Long Island Co-President Rosemary Connors. “Our partnership with Mercy Medical Center will continue to help save women's lives, and that’s at the core of our mission.”

"We are so thankful to Pink Aid for their continued support. Long Island breast cancer rates are higher than the rest of the nation and Pink Aid’s support is crucial in allowing us to provide health care access to those in need,” said Mercy Medical Center’s Director of Radiology Dr. Conellia Ha. “I’m confident that this year’s grant will have an even bigger impact on our community as the FDA moves to implement change by regulating breast cancer screenings in patients with dense breasts.”

Ha is referring to the recent FDA proposal to notify women with dense breasts about their increased cancer risk. The proposal will update mammography regulations for the first time in two decades. At Mercy, those screenings have been in place since 2013, and thanks to Pink Aid, have been offered to the uninsured and underinsured. Mercy is currently the only hospital on Long Island to offer VolparaDensity — which supplies an objective measure of breast density — and the only in New York to offer LumaGem Molecular Breast Imaging, a supplementary screening modality for women with dense breast. MBI significantly increases early detection in women and finds 400 percent more invasive cancers than a digital mammography alone.