Crusader Staff Report
Local Market Foods in South Shore’s Jeffery Plaza will host a free, all-day mammogram screening drive on Monday, July 12, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The event is sponsored by the Chicago-based Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority organization, which will conduct the screenings in its special pink and green mobile mammogram unit.
Masks and social distancing are required at the event. Participants do not need insurance but must be at least 40 years old and must not have had a mammogram in the past year. Participants also must be free of any breast problems or complaints. Women between 35 to 39 years old can receive one baseline mammogram screening without an order.
Participants must schedule an appointment online at www.assuredimaging.com/AKA or call 888-233-6121. Local Market Foods is located at 2101 E. 71st St. in South Shore.
The event is part of AKA’s national breast cancer awareness campaign that seeks to raise awareness of the impact of the disease on Black women. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year in the United States, about 255,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed in women and about 2,300 in men. About 42,000 women and 500 men in the U.S. die each year from breast cancer. Black women have a higher rate of death from breast cancer than white women. Former 8th Ward Alderman Lorraine Dixon died of breast cancer in 2001. Hattie McDaniel, the nation’s first Black Oscar winner, died of breast cancer in 1952. Singer Nina Simone died of the disease in 2003. In 2019, Actress Diahann Carroll died of breast cancer 26 years after she was first diagnosed with the disease before it returned. Reportedly, Carroll had no family history of breast cancer and led a healthy lifestyle. Breast cancer is the second most common cancer among women in the United States (some kinds of skin cancer are the most common).
