The Breast Center of Excellence (BCE) held its annual grant partners’ meeting for Access to Breast Care for West Texas (ABC4WT) and Access to Breast and Cervical Care for West Texas (ABC²4WT) Aug. 23 on the Amarillo campus. Nearly 40 community partners and providers met to hear about the key accomplishments of the ABC4WT and ABC²4WT programs and to brainstorm strategies for increasing outreach in remote Texas Panhandle communities. BCE learned Aug. 16 that funding for its ABC²4WT program would be extended by the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) for an additional three years.  

In 2010, the ABC4WT program was launched in Amarillo to help the underserved population with access to mammograms, screenings and related health information. As more needs were identified within the region, the program morphed into ABC²4WT in 2014 and is now able to provide cervical cancer screenings, HPV vaccinations and Pap test to women across West Texas. During that time, BCE made direct contact with and educated more than 22,000 individuals about breast and cervical heath, provided breast cancer screening and diagnostic services to more than 6,000 women and detected 66 breast cancers.   

The program has also provided almost 500 cervical screenings and diagnostic services and detected 25 high-risk cervical lesions. In 2016, BCE received additional funding from CPRIT to develop ABC4WT dissemination products that would be available to other institutions and organizations interested in developing education, outreach and service programs modeled after ABC4WT.