WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) was honored Friday evening with Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s “Betty Ford Lifetime Achievement Award” during the annual “Honoring the Promise” Awards Gala. The event was held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Senator Snowe was presented with the award for her leadership in the Senate Cancer Coalition. According to Komen, Senator Snowe is a “lifelong advocate for cancer research and the movement helped pass several key pieces of cancer legislation, including the Breast Cancer Research Stamp, the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act and most recently, the EARLY Act.”

This is the third year the Lifetime Achievement Award has been bestowed, and the second year it has been named in honor of former First Lady Betty Ford, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1974.  Komen honored Laura Bush as the recipient in 2010, followed by a posthumous award to Betty Ford in 2011. Senator Snowe was presented the honor by Congressman John Dingell (D-Michigan) and Susan Ford Bales, daughter of former President Gerald R. Ford and Betty Ford.

Senator Snowe said:

“This is a deeply meaningful award for me, especially given it is named in honor of First Lady Betty Ford, who bravely stepped before the nation and the world and lifted the veil of silence over breast cancer. And now, just think how far we’ve come. When my mother died of breast cancer when I was eight years old, prevention and screening weren’t even in our lexicon, and the last thing a woman diagnosed with breast cancer thought she’d become is a survivor. Today, thanks to the Komen Foundation, we’ve reduced breast cancer deaths by 25 percent – and it’s largely because Nancy Brinker refused to let breast cancer get the last word.”

A copy of the press release from Susan G. Komen for the Cure can be found here.

Senator Snowe has been a longtime champion of women’s health and breast cancer research over her nearly four decade career in the U.S. Congress. In 1989, Senator Snowe joined Representatives Pat Schroeder and Henry Waxman in writing the then-General Accounting Office, asking them to document inequities in medical research. They found that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) wasn’t even close to meeting their own guidelines on including women in clinical trials, who had been systematically excluded.  As a result, the members mandated that women and minorities be included in research trials.  Their inquiries also became the driving impetus behind Senator Snowe’s legislation to create a center for women’s health research and development at NIH, and in 1991 the ground-breaking Women’s Health Initiative was launched to help usher in the most far-reaching clinical trials in this area ever undertaken in the United States.  The trials, which followed more than 161,000 women, were revolutionary, and included the hormone therapy trial, which shook conventional wisdom and unquestionably changed the practice of medicine.  After the hormone replacement therapy trial was stopped early in 2002, female breast cancer incidence rates dropped by 7 percent over the next year. 

Senator Snowe was a strong supporter of the creation of a Breast Cancer Research Stamp in 1998 to help fund breast cancer research. The sale of each 55 cent stamp results in 11 cents donated to breast cancer research. She was an original cosponsor of legislation introduced in 2011 to extend the authority of the U.S. Postal Service to issue the stamp for another four years. The measure passed the Senate in December 2011 and is waiting to be considered by the House. 

Senator Snowe collaborated with the late Senator Ted Kennedy on the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) and on May 21, 2008, this landmark civil rights protection was enacted into law.  The legislation ensures that all Americans, no matter where they live, are protected from genetic discrimination in insurance by prohibiting plans from collecting genetic information prior to enrollment in coverage or using such information to deny coverage or set premiums.

Senator Snowe was also an early cosponsor of the EARLY Act, which creates a campaign targeted towards healthcare professionals to increase awareness of the risk factors, risk education strategies, early diagnosis techniques, and treatment practices for young women.  It also provides grants to organizations for patient navigation and support services for young women with breast cancer.