AVON Breast Health Initiative

Prior to the creation of BMC’s patient navigation program in 2004, nearly 40% of at-risk women did not follow up on their breast cancer screening abnormality. Through generous funding from the  Avon foundation , a comprehensive needs assessment at BMC identified a lack of coordination across the healthcare system coupled with complex, patient-level barriers to care.

For 14 years, the AVON foundation provided resources to reduce delays in breast cancer care delivery by addressing patient-level barriers through patient navigation.

Patient navigation remains at the cornerstone of the Belkin Breast Center, serving more than 33,000 women since the program’s inception. Our patient navigation model targets women with an identified screening abnormality, assesses their individual barriers to care, links patients to resources to address their barriers and tracks them over time to ensure completion of all services.

Dissemination of our program findings continues and has contributed to the emergence of patient navigation as a national model to reduce breast cancer disparities.

Click here to see our Avon and Boston Medical Center Patient Navigator Toolkits.