Breast Cancer Program Jeopardized By Budget Cuts
By Stephanie Mariel Petrellese

Garden City resident and program volunteer Joan Leondis speaks to a hotline caller.

The majority of volunteers who work for the Adelphi NY Statewide Breast Cancer Hotline & Support Program are fighters, having successfully battled the disease. Now they are prepared for a battle of a different sort as they fight a proposed $300,000 cut in funding that will dim the lights on a program that for 28 years has helped many people during their darkest days.

The Adelphi NY Statewide Breast Cancer Hotline & Support Program is the only comprehensive, university-based, breast cancer counseling program in New York State that is staffed by certified social workers and offers support groups, individual and family counseling. More than 6,000 people have utilized the program's counseling services in the last five years.

The breast cancer hotline is the only one offered statewide. Specially trained volunteers work two-hour shifts to ensure the toll-free hotline is manned seven days a week, including holidays, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Volunteers answer almost 4,000 calls each year, all on an anonymous and confidential basis. In the past five years, 15,000 New Yorkers have utilized the hotline service. Approximately 81 percent are from the metropolitan N.Y. area, and about 19 percent are from upstate New York.

According to program spokeswoman Lyn Dobrin, the hotline and program will likely be eliminated if legislators approve Gov. David A. Paterson's proposed 2009-10 budget. It is one of many cuts being proposed by the governor in an effort to close the state's record $15.4 billion deficit. Gov. Paterson has asked legislators to vote on the budget by March 1.

Dobrin said that upon recently learning of the proposed funding cut, the 100-plus volunteers and board members have gone into "battle mode." "We are letting our legislators know that we're very upset about it," she said. "We're hoping for the best."

Joan Leondis of Garden City, a six-year breast cancer survivor, is one of the program volunteers who have heeded the call to action. She has written letters to the governor and local state Senator Kemp Hannon.

Leondis has volunteered on the hotline and has done other outreach for four years. "It would be such a shame for the hotline not to be available to people," she said. Leondis said the hotline provides an invaluable service as it gives those who have been diagnosed with breast cancer, or who have a friend or family member who is directly affected, the opportunity to speak to someone personally.

Most of the hotline volunteers are breast cancer survivors. An effort is made to connect a caller to a volunteer who has undergone a similar course of treatment. Bilingual social workers are also available.

Leondis also has volunteered at health fairs, and other venues such as libraries or post offices, where the program sets up a table filled with brochures and volunteers help direct visitors to get further assistance. In the last five years, they have educated more than 200,000 people, including over 50,000 underserved women of color.

In addition, volunteers have facilitated more than 1,500 screening referrals to Women's Partnership programs. These programs are provided through the Cancer Services Program of the New York State Department of Health. Centers where women can receive screenings, mammography and other legal and other support services, are available in almost every county in the state, including Nassau and Suffolk.

Through the Adelphi program, social work services have been provided in the breast clinic at Nassau University Medical Center to approximately 1,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer. The program provides concrete and support services to insure that women receive the medical care that they require.

Another Garden City resident named Maureen, who asked that her last name be withheld, is a 16-year survivor and has been a program volunteer for 11 years. "It would be a terrible loss to lose the program," she said. She said the program is especially helpful to those in rural areas of New York where counseling and other programs are not as readily available.

The Web site gets over 350,000 visits annually, totaling more than 1.5 million hits over the last five years. For more information,

call (800) 877-8077 or visit

www.adelphi.edu/nysbreastcancer/.