Kurt Stuenkel, President and CEO of Floyd, recently unveiled Floyd’s new mobile mammography coach, a health outreach effort to bring breast health services to under served women in Northwest Georgia.

The bright green mobile mammography coach will travel throughout the Northwest Georgia area and will especially target women in Chattooga and Walker counties. Women in both these counties have the highest breast cancer mortality rate in the region, a rate that is higher than both the Georgia and United States averages.

The breast cancer death rate for women in Walker County is 32.0 per 100,000. In Chattooga County the death rate is 28.9 per 100,000. In Polk County the death rate is 31.3 per 100,000, in Floyd County, the rate is between 23.0 per 100,000.

The customized bus is outfitted with digital screening mammography technology. Its debut is timed to coincide with National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is October, and the announcement of the opening of The Breast Center, a new concept in comprehensive breast care located on the second floor of Floyd Medical Center at the hospital’s north entrance.

Both The Breast Center and the mobile mammography coach are designed to empower and encourage women to be knowledgeable about their breast health needs in an easily accessed, comfortable, supportive and technologically advanced environment designed especially for women.

“This mobile mammography coach will help us to meet the women of Northwest Georgia where they are,” said Aimee Griffin, director of The Breast Center. “Despite the overwhelming evidence that early detection is the best protection against breast cancer, one-third of women 40 and over have not had an annual mammogram in the past two years.

The Summerville News