Today, I’ll have a routine mammogram. I’ve always been grateful for access to excellent healthcare and the insurance to pay for it. Ever since a 2006 ELCA World Hunger visit to Chile to visit the EPES (“Popular Education for Health”) program, I’ve been especially grateful.
In Chile, EPES health promoters paint educational wall murals to promote breast awareness and advocate for greater access to mammography.
For almost 30 years, (mostly) women from the poorest communities in Santiago and Concepción have been trained has health educators, with transformational results. In 2000, EPES health groups began a breast cancer awareness campaign. Their techniques include hanging bras on clotheslines in the market, wearing bras over their clothes, using a necklace of graduated-size beads to demonstrate normal and abnormal breast lumps, and painting educational wall murals. They mounted an advocacy campaign, collected over 5,000 signatures and secured one free mammogram the year a woman turns 50. They achieved what seemed impossible: getting mammography at the Pino (community) hospital.
In 2006, EPES health promoters were committed to continued advocacy, saying they would not rest until
- every woman over 40 years old has the right to mammography every two years.
- every woman has the right to immediate treatment.
- mammography results are reported on a timely basis (it can take three months for a report).
- all women can expect timely and dignified care.
Dearests, if you have access to mammography and have the insurance or other means to pay for it, make your appointment and give thanks.
—Sue Edison-Swift (4/4/2011, updated 3/18/2021)
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