October 12, 2001

The Avon Products Foundation awarded a $10 million gift to the MGH Cancer Center Oct. 9, making it the largest corporate foundation gift in the history of the hospital. The gift – raised by the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade – was announced by Andrea Jung, chairman and CEO of Avon Products, Inc., at the first ever Avon "Kiss Goodbye to Breast Cancer" Awards Gala in New York City. This money is in addition to $2.2 million the Avon Products Foundation awarded to the MGH in March.

The latest gift is part of an unprecedented $50 million award from the Avon Products Foundation to the breast cancer cause – disbursed to the MGH, the National Cancer Institute and two additional national cancer centers – to accelerate medical research and improve access to screening and treatment for medically underserved women.

The Cancer Center will use part of the gift to fund an outreach initiative focused at the MGH Chelsea HealthCare Center – which serves mostly Latino and immigrant populations – and at the Mattapan Community Health Center in Boston, which serves a primarily African-American community. Mattapan has the highest breast cancer mortality rate in Boston.

In addition, the gift will help support the construction of a new, state-of-the-art breast imaging and surgical screening center. The center – to be completed in 2002 – will be key to the MGH's ability to increase its number of early breast cancer diagnoses, and also will increase the hospital's capacity to perform screenings and evaluations by 33 percent.

The gift also will support research at the MGH that focuses on molecular genetic studies of human breast cancer, as well as the development of diagnostic and therapeutic strategies that are based on these molecular insights. The money also will go toward the funding of a high-risk breast cancer clinic that will offer specialized genetic counseling for women and families at an increased risk for breast cancer.