Co-captain Harold Dean, LCSW, a clinical oncology social worker at ACRC, was also pleased and surprised. "In the last week we had actually over a thousand registrations come in," said Dean, who singled out Liz Genz and Grace Williams in Hospital Volunteer Services for their work in coordinating the registration.
"UAMS is a huge part of what we do here," said 2002 Race Chair Amy Treadway. A record 36,000 women took part in this year’s race. "UAMS is a friend of the Komen Foundation, and you can tell that by the wonderful grants that we’ve been able to fund from UAMS in the past few years."

The Arkansas chapter of the Komen Foundation has awarded more than $2 million in grants, thanks to the annual race fundraiser. The largest, a grant of $380,000, went to ACRC for a modular mammography unit that will be used to examine women in the 21 counties of Arkansas that do not have permanent FDA-approved mammography facilities.

Breast surgical oncologist Ronda Henry-Tillman, M.D., was on hand at the UAMS booth to display the unit and explain how it works. "We’re doing this in connection with their physicians, because what we want the physicians to do is help us to stress the awareness of total breast health," Dr. Henry-Tillman said. "If you look around, there are so many women here that probably really never thought about breast cancer or how it’s going to effect their life. But this race helps us improve awareness, and therefore screening rates in the state of Arkansas, so that we can reduce mortality rates," she said.