August 2007 (Vol. 2, No. 6)
| Keiskamma Altarpiece at St. Mark's Cathedral |
Saint Mark's Cathedral is honored to host the Keiskamma Altarpiece, named for the Keiskamma River valley in South Africa's rural Eastern Cape Province, one of South Africa's poorest regions and also one of the hardest hit by AIDS. The Keiskamma Altarpiece is a contemporary icon of how the human spirit can rise above adversity and create art of enduring strength and beauty. The Altarpiece was created by130 women and a few men who reside in the coastal town of Hamburg. The massive (13 feet by 22 feet) Altarpiece is constructed of intricate embroidery, appliqué, beadwork, and photography, and took more than six months to complete. The Altarpiece conveys a vibrant message of hope for people who are contending with the devastation that AIDS has wrought in their lives.
On August 15, 2007, St. Mark's will host a reception with Eunice Nombulelo Mangwane who is known as Hamburg's AIDS counselor. She has been working with Dr. Carol Hofmeyr in Hamburg's clinics and in AIDS support groups for the past four years. Mrs. Mangwane was born in 1948 in the Eastern Cape, but spent many years in Cape Town where she worked as a preschool teacher's aide. Towards the end of her stay in Cape Town she became very involved with AIDS education and counseling, attending many training workshops.
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| Center nurtures pathways to science careers for students of color |
Center labs are opening doors of opportunities for science minded students from backgrounds long underrepresented in the field.
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| New stem cell transplant program offers new hope to many patients |
Early clinical trial successes show the amazing, lifesaving potential of unique umbilical cord-blood transplant program. This new treatment option offers many advantages: Cord blood is readily available, fewer viral infections are transmitted with it, and it is immunologically naïve, so it doesn't require the extremely close tissue-type matching of bone-marrow transplants, which increases the donor pool and extends the option of transplant for those patients, especially people of color and those of mixed ethnicity, who cannot find a conventional donor.
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| Ovarian-cancer treatment's deadly disparities |
Recent Hutchinson Center study finds patients who are poor, elderly or from communities of color are most likely to receive inadequate care
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| Minority Scientist Recruitment and Retention (MSRR) coalition |
The Minority Scientist Recruitment and Retention (MSRR) coalition was founded to help various people and programs at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center make connections with one another, help disseminate local and national information about initiatives to promote minority representation in the biomedical sciences, and to coordinate efforts to recruit and retain minority scientists in our community.
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| Resources for research outreach |
New intranet site at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center hopes to ease recruitment access into communities of color.
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This newsletter is designed as a tool to keep communities and individuals informed on topics related to cancer research and to develop a relationship with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
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