The project, a program of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), will use the grant to hold a national meeting in November for volunteers from 20 states.

”We are very excited about this grant and the work that will be accomplished in our continued efforts to moving ever closer to fulfilling the mission of the Komen Foundation - to eradicate breast cancer as a life threatening disease,” Karla Stines of the foundation said.

The Witness Project (WP) is a culturally competent, community-based breast and cervical cancer education program designed to meet the specific cultural, educational, knowledge, and learning style levels of underserved African-American (AA) women. Created in 1991, The WP recruits, trains, and provides resources to AA breast and cervical cancer survivors to become Witness Role Models, and other AA women, after training, to become Lay Health Advisors. These women then go as teams to provide educational, inspirational, and empowerment messages in AA churches and to community groups to increase the practices of breast self-examination (BSE), mammography, clinical breast examination (CBE), pelvic examination and Pap testing. The global objective of the WP is to increase awareness, knowledge, screening, and early detection behaviors in AA women in an effort to reduce the mortality and morbidity from breast and cervical cancer.

The Komen Foundation was the first funding source to support the Witness Project. Mattye J. Willis is director of the Witness Project and Deborah O. Erwin, Ph.D., an anthropologist in the UAMS College of Medicine, is the co-founder.

Links on This Page

Witness Project: http://www.acrc.uams.edu/outreach/witnessproject/index.html
 
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