It’s just not spring in Indianapolis until thousands of people don pink and gather downtown for the annual Susan G. Komen Central Indiana Race for the Cure.
The 25th annual fundraising event for the breast cancer organization is scheduled for April 16 this year at Military Park downtown, and 15,000 people are expected to gather for the occasion. It’s a far cry from the 1,701 participants who turned up for the inaugural event in 1992.
Natalie Sutton, executive director of Susan G. Komen Central Indiana, said she recently met with the committee that organized that first event.
“It was funny hearing their stories and thinking about what the race was at that time. There have been so many things that have changed,” Sutton said.
For one, without a smartphone in every hand, there are far fewer photos of the 1992 event than there are of more recent races. And without online registration, the original committee didn’t have much of a headcount prior to the event.
“One of the most striking things to me was they were talking about the survivors they knew and trying to get breast cancer survivors to come and participate in this new event,” Sutton said. “They said each of them maybe knew one or two people who had been affected by breast cancer, so they had just a handful of breast cancer survivors there that day. Now, we have as many breast cancer survivors at Race for the Cure as they had in the whole race that first year.”
Sutton said multiple factors are at play when looking at those changing numbers.
“People were less likely to survive breast cancer in 1992. We did not focus as much on early detection, and the treatments weren’t as good as they are now,” she said. “The other thing is, sometimes people didn’t talk openly about breast cancer. There was a stigma and a lack of comfort sharing you had breast cancer or that you were a survivor.”
Sutton said Komen Central Indiana and the Race for the Cure over the past 25 years are partly responsible for advancements made in early detection and public awareness of breast cancer. Since 1992, Komen Central Indiana has invested more than $18 million in central Indiana, Sutton said.
“That money provides grants to nonprofit organizations for their breast health programs, and those breast health programs provide things like complimentary screenings or free diagnostic tests for someone who has an abnormal screening and is going through diagnosis,” she said.
“We also fund breast cancer research through Komen’s national research program, and we’re very proud that, over the years, more than $23 million in research funding has come back to Indiana institutions. So there’s great research happening right here in our community, and we’re very fortunate to partner with those institutions and those scientists.”
Sutton said accomplishments in breast cancer research can give people the wrong idea.
“People sometimes look at breast cancer and think we’ve come so far, aren’t we done? But we’re not done yet,” she said “Forty-thousand women still die of breast cancer every year in the United States. That’s not good enough. We have to keep funding research, and we have to keep supporting local survivors and patients who are battling breast cancer.”
Looking ahead, Sutton said breast cancer research is in “a really exciting time.”
“There’s a lot of work being done in genomics and being able to understand the genetic makeup of a tumor and a patient, and how do we make treatment easier and give patients the right treatment the first time,” she said. “I think the way we treat breast cancer could be completely transformed 10 years from now.”
Sutton said Komen Central Indiana is also working to address racial disparities in breast cancer.
“African-American women are 40 percent more likely to die of breast cancer than white women,” she said. “We’ve formed a collaborative group with other local organizations and faith-based organizations to put advocates in some local African-American congregations and raise awareness. We’re trying to reach out to African-American women and make sure they know about the resources available, that you can survive breast cancer.”
Editor’s note: The Indianapolis Recorder is a sponsor of the 2016 Susan G. Komen Central Indiana Race for the Cure.
