Saving Women's Lives

In this report The Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) present a one-day symposium that was held at the IOM to further disseminate the conclusions and recommendations of the joint IOM and National Research Council report, Saving Women’s Lives: Strategies for Improving Breast Cancer Detection and Diagnosis. The symposium was introduced by Mrs. Evelyn Lauder, Founder and Chairman of the BCRF; and Dr. Edward Penhoet, Chairman of the IOM committee for the report. At a plenary session in the morning six invited experts from academia, the American Cancer Society, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services gave presentations on what women need to know about mammography, challenges to expanding mammography capacity, better models for mammography services, risk stratification for breast cancer detection, the promise of biomarkers, and bringing new technologies into service. In the afternoon, panelists from the National Cancer Institute, the Food and Drug Administration, Kaiser Permanente, Blue Cross Blue Shield, the American College of Radiology (ACR), Partners Health Care, and University of California, San Francisco, gave presentations and participated in discussions with attendees in two groups, one on delivering better breast cancer screening services and one on developing and delivering new detection technologies. A wrap-up session at the end summarized the issues raised, including: how to organize mammography better and recruit women to screening; lessons learned from screening in the United Kingdom; and disparities in breast cancer screening and care, Mammography Quality Standards Act enforcement, ACR perspectives on screening, the roles of National Institutes of Health in cancer detection technology development, engineers working with clinicians to develop breast cancer detection, technology evaluation and coverage policy, and assessing technologies in managed care systems. At the end, a representative of breast cancer survivors gave her perspectives on the day.