Things don't happen unless they happen in a community first.

People don't like to travel to go be taken care of somewhere with healthcare, they wanna be treated in their hometown.

And they wanna know who's treating them and they wanna understand what's going on.

And we have an obligation not only to treat people, but educate people.

I know that sometimes the fear kind of paralyze us as a woman.

We're taking care of everybody else, of ourself.

I know for women, our family is the most important thing that we can have.

But if we don't protect ourself, we won't be able to protect our family.

I moved back to Florida after I served overseas and in Washington for over 10 years, and had lived in different places of the country, but something wasn't right.

And I did a lot of asking when I got back, "How are things in our community going on in Palm Beach County?"

When I found out that women's healthcare, certain women in our community, 80 to a hundred thousand was suffering, and they were suffering as a result, having no primary care.

And the only real source of care I came to find was part of the Federally Qualified Healthcare Center, centers that we have all over the United States.

And as I looked around, a great friend of mine was very involved in a federally qualified healthcare center here called FoundCare.

And then I approached them with my friends that we had gathered now to create the Promise Fund with this clear understanding that we're going to build a center for such cases that we were concerned about.

So Promise Fund target population is for women who are underserved.

As we know, the stats shows that minority women, African American and Latino or Hispanic women, are at higher risk of getting breast and cervical cancer.

So we want to make sure that when we go out there, that we provide that education component.

This is exactly what I wanted to do after I had spent almost 40 years building out an organization I named in honor of my sister, Susan Komen, and answering the second wish.

First, she asked me to see if I could cure the disease.

And then the second wish was really, "I want every woman to have access to care the way I did."

This is the natural follow on of building years and years of large funding to research, building the organization and communities.

And the Promise Fund now has created a real footprint in our community.

Over the last five years, we now have engaged over 22,000 women in our community who have either been through our program, screening, getting education, and connecting them to a source of primary care, so that now 7,000 of them easily now have a medical home and they know who to talk to.

And we have only found 94 cancers, largely early stage cancers, out of that many people taken care of.

Now, how did that happen?

Because we brought on over 20 patient navigators.

I think the way I see Promise Fund, we are that bridge.

We are that bridge that connects the community with the services.

Many times, the fear of this, of the people in our community is that, "Okay, so if they come back and say, you need a biopsy, I don't have funding to do that."

We are here.

We will provide that funding.

The biopsy, let's say, comes back positive.

Again, we sit down with the participant, and then we will follow up the next step and is connecting to treatment.

And we are working with partners in our community who will be able to provide that treatment.

And again, from A to Z, the entire what we call continuing of care, we will walk that with our patients.

These are people who become guides, just exactly what it sounds like, who can take a patient by the hand, start with a phone call.

And then once they have this bond of friendship, of guidance, of lack of fear.

The navigator basically becomes a member of their family and is always there to help them with whatever they need, whether it not be like for a breast or cervical cancer screening.

We'll connect them to like food banks, any resources that they may need, financial assistance, rental assistance, anything like that.

We're basically just there to help them and their families through any barriers that they may be facing at the time.

Patient navigators represent them.

Patient navigators are part of the community, and that makes a big difference.

They are not only bilingual, but also bicultural.

They understand the culture.

Culture plays such a big important part when we are working with the woman in our community.

Being a navigator for these women is such a fulfilling role for me, just because I do come from an immigrant family and I did see like all the stuff that my mom had to go through, and she was an early breast cancer survivor, and my parents, they had to work so many jobs.

So just giving back to the community is such a fulfilling role.

Movements are not easy to start.

It takes quite a while.

And in this case, this also represents a movement.

Work in the community.

If a community responds to a problem, the chances of the survival, of the solution, are great because people are involved.

And so with me, and I wake up every morning after all these years and smile because I know someone, somewhere today in our county is gonna get a mammogram, gonna have a checkup, gonna become part of a healthcare system, and very likely move through it and have a healthy life.