It was November 2021, and Jack Khashou – wearing a tie with pink accents – stood before a room of local community and healthcare stakeholders gathered to celebrate the success of St. Tammany Health System and St. Tammany Hospital Foundation’s inaugural United in Pink breast cancer awareness campaign.
Moments earlier, it had been announced the campaign had raised more than $35,000 for Northshore cancer care in just one month’s time. It was then and there that Khashou, the administrator of St. Tammany Cancer Center, a campus of Ochsner Medical Center, promised that the monthlong event would be back in October 2022.
“We can’t stop now,” Khashou said. “… If you catch (cancer) early, you change the outcome. It saves lives. It really does. There’s no other way to say it.”
Delivering on that promise, the foundation – in partnership with St. Tammany Health System, the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office, local businesses and others – is gearing up for of return of United in Pink.
Call it Re-United in Pink.
Once again, the campaign will run all October long. Once again, it will operate with the primary goal of providing easy, convenient mammograms to as many local women as possible and educating the community on how to support breast cancer care on the Northshore. And, also once again, the health system’s Be Well Bus – a 40-foot mobile health unit equipped with leading-edge mammography equipment – will lead the charge.
“Since it first hit the streets of St. Tammany and started performing mammograms in August 2021, we’ve identified five breast cancers through screenings on the Be Well Bus,” said Anne Pablovich, the health system’s community health coordinator. “That’s potentially five lives saved in just more than a year of service. I can’t think of a better, more encouraging sign of success. And the best part is that we’re just getting started!”