For the past 28 years, the Adelphi NY Statewide Breast Cancer Hotline and Support Program has been providing advice, support and screening to women with breast cancer.
But this year's budget crisis has organizers worried that the governor's proposed budget will shut them out -- and shut them down.
The governor's budget office has recommended eliminating the $300,000 that the state gives to the breast cancer group every year.
The group's executive director, Hillary Rutter, said that's enough to keep its phones silent for good.
"We knew with all the cuts that perhaps our funding would be reduced, but I never thought they would eliminate" it, Rutter said.
The money pays for staff and social workers, she said, and represents a large chunk of the hotline's $800,000 annual budget. Without the state's contribution, "it absolutely could" shut the organization down, Rutter said.
In addition to the hotline, which is answered from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day by volunteers who have had breast cancer, the program sends social workers to Nassau University Medical Center to counsel low-income women who have just been diagnosed, and conducts outreach in low-income communities to encourage women to get screened.
"I know what's going on with the economy and everything else, but women continue to be diagnosed," Rutter said. "We have been the support for them so they don't have to go through it alone."
The hotline, at 800-877-8077, was a "low priority" this year because similar services are provided by the health department, said Beth Goldberg, a spokeswoman for the department.
"Residents of Long Island will be able to get the same high-quality services from the state cancer services phone line," Goldberg wrote in an e-mail. That number is 866-442-2262.
But Ritter said there's at least one way in which the state's hotline differs from hers: Her group uses breast cancer survivors to answer the phones. "If you speak to someone who had breast cancer 15 years ago and is still there to talk about it, there's a sense of hope that you can get through it, too," she said. To see more of Newsday, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.newsday.com Copyright (c) 2009, Newsday, Melville, N.Y. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Copyright (C) 2009, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.