In recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Emory Saint Joseph’s Mobile Mammography is celebrating 26 years of saving women’s lives in metro Atlanta. Since 1988, when the first mobile unit was generously given to the hospital by an anonymous donor, Emory Saint Joseph’s Mobile Mammography has maintained a busy schedule, providing easily accessible mammograms for community groups, corporate offices, schools, churches and retirement communities. Other site visits include Mercy Care, the Center for Black Women’s Wellness and the VA Medical Center.

The mobile unit provides initial screening for patients, and if follow-up is needed, they are referred to the Ed and Dora Voyles Breast Center at Emory Saint Joseph’s, says Jackie McCarty, the Mobile Mammography Coordinator.

“We are affecting people and potentially saving their lives,” says Patty Thompson, the mobile unit staffing supervisor, about the on site mammograms. During a six-year period alone, the mobile unit completed more than 22,000 mammograms, and at one remarkable site visit, three breast cancer cases were detected in a single day.

“Women are always so appreciative of the mobile unit being there for them, especially for the convenience we provide, and a lot of women wouldn’t have their annual mammogram if the mobile unit didn’t visit,” says Thompson, a technologist and driver in the early beginnings of the mobile program. Since that time, the Saint Joseph’s Auxiliary funded the purchase of a new $350,000 state-of-the-art van that operates five days a week, with the capacity of providing 23 mammograms every day.

For more information about Emory Saint Joseph’s Mobile Mammography, call 678-843-5930. Mammograms are offered at a reduced cost to patients, due to grant funding at various clinic sites. The cost of mammograms for self-pay patients is $135.