Health

Sinai Chicago Receives $250,000 Grant from Aetna Better Health of Illinois to Empower Women through Health Education

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CHICAGO (PRWEB)

Sinai Chicago today announced it has received a $250,000 grant award from Aetna Better Health of Illinois, a managed health care business of Aetna®, a CVS Health® company (NYSE: CVS), to provide breast, cervical and colorectal cancer outreach, education, and navigation services for up to 4,000 African-American and Latina women living on Chicago’s west and southwest sides.

Sinai Urban Health Institute (SUHI), Sinai Chicago’s community-based health research entity, offers a breast health outreach, education and navigation program called Helping Her Live. The program employs community health workers to assist African-American and Latina women living in resource-poor communities to get mammograms and referrals to follow-up care and services. The grant from Aetna enables an expansion of the Helping Her Live model, which has been successful in increasing breast cancer awareness and connecting women to free or affordable mammogram services, to include cervical and colorectal cancer education and navigation.

“There are huge inequities in the screening, diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer in minority women,” says Stacy Ignoffo, Director of Community Health Innovations at SUHI. “This grant will provide critical resources for the Helping Her Live program to continue addressing those inequities and help reach our goals of making sure every woman can get quality and timely breast care and ensuring no one dies unnecessarily from breast cancer. It will also allow us to add needed education on and navigation for cervical and colorectal cancer screenings”

“Aetna’s collaboration with Sinai Chicago helps to further empower African-American and Latina women to continue being champions for their health,” said Kim Foltz, CEO, Aetna Better Health of Illinois. “Connecting them to these potentially life-saving services now can help make a profound impact on their current health status and their future well-being.”

Since 2007, Helping Her Live has educated over 15,000 women about breast health and the importance of getting annual mammograms and navigated women to over 4,300 mammograms. Using evidence-based intervention, it is one of the first projects in the nation pursuing community outreach and navigation for improved breast health.

Aetna Better Health of Illinois offers quality, affordable health care to individuals through the state’s HealthChoice Illinois Medicaid program. The health plan serves nearly 400,000 members in 102 counties.

Helping Her Live services are available free of charge. To learn more, call 877-437-5432 or email at HelpingHerLive@sinai.org.

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About Sinai Chicago

Sinai Chicago is a Chicago-based private, not-for-profit organization comprised of seven member organizations: Mount Sinai Hospital, Holy Cross Hospital, Sinai Children’s Hospital, Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital, Sinai Medical Group, Sinai Community Institute and Sinai Urban Health Institute. The system has over 800 physicians on its hospital medical staffs, 654 licensed beds, 100,000+ annual emergency department patient visits and eight physician residency training programs. For more information, visit http://www.sinaichicago.org

About Aetna Medicaid Aetna Medicaid Administrators LLC (Aetna Medicaid), a CVS Health company, has over 30 years of experience managing the care of the most medically vulnerable, using innovative approaches and a local presence in each market to achieve both successful health care results and effective cost outcomes. Aetna Medicaid has particular expertise serving high-need Medicaid members, including those who are dually eligible for Medicaid and Medicare. Currently, Aetna Medicaid owns and/or administers Medicaid managed health care plans under the names of Aetna Better Health and other affiliate names. Together, these plans serve approximately 2.8 million people in 15 states, including Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. For more information, see , http://www.aetnabetterhealth.com.

Media Contact:

Dan Regan

Vice President – Communications, PR and Marketing

Sinai Chicago

773.257.5228 (Office)

312.622.0871 (Cell) dan.regan@sinai.org

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