Local affiliate offers perspective

By Karen Bragman

and Kelly Dolan

Given the controversy surrounding the national Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization over the past few days, we thought it was important to provide a local perspective.

As an affiliated but separate corporate entity from the national organization, the Greater Atlanta Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure makes all of its funding decisions on the local level.

Komen Atlanta provides $2.2 million in funding to 22 Atlanta-area breast cancer screening and support-service programs. Last year alone, Komen Atlanta and our grantees were able to provide services to 151,759 people in our community.

The Atlanta-area Planned Parenthood organization has never requested funding from Komen Atlanta, so it has never received funds from our organization. Komen Atlanta remains committed to ensuring that all women in our community, especially the underserved, have access to lifesaving breast-cancer screening and support services.

The Komen Atlanta board of directors understands and supports the need to have strict policies pertaining to the grant of Komen funds, but sometimes policies have unintended consequences.

We called on the national organization to revise the new guideline providing that an applicant, or its affiliates, under a formal investigation for financial or administrative improprieties by local, state or federal authorities would be ineligible to receive a Komen grant.

We disagreed with the premise that an organization cannot apply for funding while under investigation. We believed this to be a nebulous and open-ended criterion for funding that would require Komen to make judgment calls about organizations before any finding of wrongdoing. This type of prejudgment would have made the Komen organization vulnerable to criticism that it was making funding decisions based on political factors, which simply cannot be allowed.

Komen National has agreed to amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair. With this modification, Komen affiliates will maintain the ability to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities. This also will allow all organizations, including Planned Parenthood, to apply for grant funding if they choose.

One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime. Early detection and intervention is proven to save lives. Komen Atlanta will continue to work hard every day to provide low-cost and no-cost screening services for the underserved in our community.

Our mission is to enable women to detect and survive breast cancer — that is what we do.

Karen Bragman is president of Komen Atlanta. Kelly Dolan is executive director of Komen Atlanta.