Boston, MA— May 16, 2004 — Today at 4:00 p.m. at the closing ceremony of the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer Boston, Avon Foundation Executive Director Carol Kurzig awarded initial gifts totaling $1,050,000 to Boston Medical Center (BMC), Cambridge Health Alliance and Silent Spring Institute. These gifts represent initial commitments from the $4,500,000 total raised by the 1900 participants in the event.

The ceremony, held at Joe Moakley Park, capped a weekend-long event during which walkers covered up to 39 miles through the Boston area. Supported by a staff of volunteer crew members, walkers ended their journey by learning how the funds they raised would be used to support women throughout the city and nationwide. Additional awards will be made throughout the year.

“Each of these institutions makes a huge difference not just to the individual patients they serve, but to everyone in the Greater Boston area,” said Kurzig. “Breast cancer affects everyone, and as long it exists, so will our commitment to funding initiatives to defeat this disease on both individual and universal levels, from Boston to the United States to the entire world.”

During the weekend Avon Walk, the dates for the 2005 Boston, MA event – May 14-15* – were announced, and current participants started registering to repeat their experience. General registration is open online at www.avonwalk.org.

About the Avon Walk Boston
The Avon Walk began early Saturday morning at Joe Moakley Park, across from the Bayside Exposition Center. Walkers traveled through the Boston area’s historic areas and close-knit communities towards the Wellness Village at Pine Banks Park in Malden, MA. At the Village, their home away from home for the night, participants celebrated their first day of success with yoga, massage and entertainment. The Village also provided the essentials to keep participants comfortable, including sleeping tents, hot showers, prepared meals and comprehensive medical services. Friends and family came out to visit their loved ones and show their support. Today, all walkers completed the final 13.1 miles of the route, returning to their point of origin— Joe Moakley Park— for the closing ceremony celebration. Throughout the weekend, a dedicated all-volunteer crew cared for the walkers, ensuring their safety and supporting their needs.

About the Avon Foundation Gifts
Boston Medical Center (BMC) received a $500,000 gift, bringing the total amount of Avon Foundation gifts to the Center to nearly $2,000,000 since 2001. A “safety net” hospital, BMC will use the Avon Foundation funds to support patient navigation personnel, including outreach/inreach workers, advocates, case managers and translators. The gift will also support much-needed information technology to assure smooth case coordination. A main goal of the Avon Initiative at BMC is to ensure that women receive timely and complete diagnostic evaluation for a breast problem or an abnormal breast screening. Previous Avon Foundation gifts have enabled BMC to expand breast health services within its network, which has served nearly 2,800 economically disadvantaged, minority and uninsured women in the past three years and provided outreach to more than 3,000 women. Patients challenged by language, cultural and economic barriers have been seen in more than 4,000 clinical visits to BMC sites. BMC and its Boston HealthNet community center partners are the primary care providers for low-income residents living in Roxbury, Mattapan, South Boston, Jamaica Plain, East Boston, Dorchester, Mission Hill and Hyde Park. While BMC provides extraordinary services for the community, it constantly seeks ways to fund new initiatives, such as those the Avon Foundation gifts support.

“Contemplating the upheaval and costs of serious disease leads a significant number of people in need to forego screening, diagnostic care or treatment altogether,” said Karen Freund, MD, MPH, chief of the Women’s Health Group at BMC. “Helping vulnerable populations overcome these hurdles is the aim of the Avon Foundation Initiative at BMC and the reasoning behind our campus-wide breast services design. This generous contribution gives us an opportunity to take care one step further, ensuring even more women and men have tools to make early detection happen.”

Cambridge Health Alliance (the Alliance) was awarded $500,000, which will be used to increase its breast cancer screening program from serving 11,000 to 18,000 women annually in its four target cities: Cambridge, Somerville, Everett and Boston Metro North communities. With this gift, the Alliance will: hire additional staff, including a physician supervisor, a breast health program coordinator, mammogram technologists and data managers; create a computer system for patient tracking, follow-up and quality control; and will purchase new equipment as well as provide services which will enable women to utilize the system’s resources, such as transportation to and from a center and childcare while they are using a center’s facilities. The Alliance’s focus on serving the medically underserved provides the perfect synergy for the Avon Foundation’s commitment to ensuring access to care and finding a cure to benefit all women and men. The Alliance is a safety net provider that is one of the nation’s premier public health systems and is proportionately the largest provider of Free Care in Massachusetts. The system includes three acute care hospitals in Cambridge, Somerville and Everett, MA, more than 20 neighborhood health centers, community-based programs and Network Health, a growing Medicare plan. The Alliance is noted for providing quality, affordable and accessible health and human services to a range of multicultural populations, as well as noted for its expertise in delivering innovative health and community programs and culturally competent care.

“The Avon Foundation is at the forefront of removing potential barriers to care and is assuring that historically underserved people in multicultural communities are provided with the best care services possible,” said Linda Cundiff, Executive Director of the Alliance’s Community Affairs Department. “The Alliance and the Avon Foundation share a vision of a world without a ‘medically underserved’ population, and this gift brings us one step closer to achieving that goal.”

Silent Spring Institute was awarded $50,000 for operations and administrative costs. The Institute is a national leader in scientific research about possible environmental causes of breast cancer. Founded in 1994 in response to high breast cancer incidence on Cape Cod, the Institute is pursuing environmental links that can lead to prevention. The research team includes the Institute’s own scientific staff and researchers at Boston University, Harvard University, the US Centers for Disease Control, and elsewhere. Silent Spring Institute’s innovative research includes a study of 89 pollutants that are common in homes. As a smaller organization, the Institute is in constant search of funding for their “overhead/administrative” costs; this gift will help alleviate some of the stress of these costs so the Institute’s focus can remain on research.

Earlier this year the Avon Foundation launched a new access to care initiative – "Supporting the Safety Net" – to fund public and safety net hospitals that care for low-income, uninsured individuals. As part of the commitment to providing funding in communities where they are raised, throughout the year gifts will be awarded by the Avon Foundation to qualifying institutions in the areas of events, such as the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. For more information on Avon Foundation grant guidelines visit www.avonfoundation.org.

About the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer
The Avon Walks are a project of the Avon Foundation, a 501(c )(3) public charity, which also manages and disburses the funds raised. All net proceeds from the Avon Walks are returned to the breast cancer cause nationwide to support awareness and education; screening and diagnosis; treatment; support services and scientific research. Beneficiaries range from leading cancer centers to community-based non-profit breast health programs, with a focus on reaching the medically underserved and a mission to fund access to care and finding a cure for breast cancer. Fore more than a decade, the Avon Foundation Breast Cancer Crusade has been raising significant funds and awareness for the breast cancer cause. To date, the Avon Crusade has awarded more than $300,000,000 to breast cancer research and care organizations worldwide. Funds are raised through a wide variety of special events, product sales, walks, runs, concerts and other marketing initiatives worldwide.

The 2004 national sponsors for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer series include Novartis, Health magazine and RYKÄ, footwear for women; FIJI is the Official Water and United Airlines is the Official Airline.