Community Health Education Non-Profit Promotes Breast Health Awareness

Dec. 30, 2010 - PRLog -- Miami-Dade AHEC’s Hands on Health team was a significant presence at the Race for the Cure on Saturday, October 16th, at Bayfront Park.  Hands on Health, a program supported through funding by the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, provides preventative education on proper breast health to the community with a focus specifically on high school-aged young adults.  In an effort to further the mission of eradicating breast cancer as a life threatening disease, the Hands on Health team had the opportunity at this year’s event to speak to well over 100 race attendees.  This is only a fraction of the 3,500 people throughout Miami-Dade and Broward counties that Miami-Dade AHEC aims to educate this year alone through the Hands on Health program.

As part of the Hands on Health initiative, Ebony Orr, Health Educator for Miami-Dade AHEC, visits high schools to teach students important tips and tools such as proper breast self-examination techniques and the fact that even men can get breast cancer.  Orr has worked with Miami-Dade AHEC for three years and has found the experience very rewarding: “I visit some of the same schools each year, and when I come back, they remember…they know the information behind the pink glamour.”

Orr also manages another Miami-Dade AHEC breast health program known as Students for Cancer Outreach Prevention and Education, or SCOPE, for students of Miami Springs Senior High.  Through SCOPE, the students are trained throughout the year as peer educators of breast health awareness to fellow students as well as their communities. As part of their outreach efforts, they joined the Miami-Dade AHEC team at the Race for the Cure.

Miami-Dade AHEC hopes to continue to expand the Hands on Health and SCOPE programs to reach even more people throughout the community. To jumpstart the endeavor to reach the funding goal of $50,000, Miami-Dade AHEC also had a table filled with pink goodies at the Race for the Cure. Program Assistant Morgan Jordan manned the table and helped raise over $450.  “It was so exciting to see how supportive everyone was of our programs and efforts,” Jordan said.  If you would like to help Miami-Dade AHEC, you can donate by visiting www.mdahec.org/Donate.

Miami-Dade AHEC seeks to improve the health of individuals and communities by transforming healthcare through education.  We connect students to careers, professionals to communities, and communities to better health.  For more information about Miami-Dade AHEC and its programs and services, please visit our website at www.mdahec.org or contact our Marketing Coordinator directly at 305-597-3649 or Marketing@mdahec.org.

# # #

Miami-Dade Area Health Education Center (AHEC), Inc. is a South Florida non-profit whose mission is to ensure that our underserved communities are educated on today’s most critical health topics and have access to quality health care.