The Susan G Komen Foundation
The Susan G. Komen foundation has built a hard-earned reputation as one of the most respected – and most effective – cancer charities in the world. Here at The Orchid Recovery Center, we support the work the foundation has done in the battle against breast cancer. Inspired by Komen’s personal fight against breast cancer and her dedication to the cause itself, founder Nancy G. Brinker set out to create the foundation in her sister’s honor. Since its beginnings in the early 1980s, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation has invested over a billion and a half dollars into the fight against breast cancer.
With participation from breast cancer survivors as well as their families and friends, the Susan G. Komen foundation has created a support network for millions of women fighting breast cancer worldwide. The foundation’s now-famous “Race for the Cure” event has raised record-breaking levels of donations each year, making the organization the number-one nonprofit fundraising organization in the world among organizations joining in the fight to end breast cancer.
Ways the Susan G. Komen Foundation Is Making a Difference
In addition to providing an education and support network to survivors of breast cancer and their loved ones, the Susan G. Komen foundation has seen its efforts help bring about social and medical change. In the time since the foundation’s inception, early detection techniques have improved, with three-quarters of women over 40 regularly undergoing preventative mammograms.
Additionally, in the time since the organization’s birth, early breast cancer’s five-year survival rate (used as the most predictable measure of long-term survival in oncology) increased from 74 to 98 percent over the last two and a half decades. The Susan G. Komen Foundation has also been pivotal in facilitating government funding for breast cancer research, now totaling more than $900 million annually. Perhaps most poignantly, America now boasts more than two and a half million individuals who have survived breast cancer, making these courageous individuals the single largest group of cancer survivors in the country.
