1 in 9 holds their first breast cancer awareness rally in Mineola, NY in 1991.
We held New York’s first international meeting on breast cancer with third world countries at the Nassau Country Legislative Building.
After rising concern over the use of pesticides and chemicals in the 1990s, 1 in 9 worked with Marion Moses, a scientist from California, to create a Pesticide Registry for the State of New York to help monitor the impact of chemicals on the water.
We petitioned Governor Pataki to pass this registry for over four years, which resulted in the governor coming to Hewlett House to sign the Women’s Health Bill, which included this registry among other anti-cancer measures, into law. The bill helped to provide better health care, stricter environmental regulations, and fund additional research on the causes of and treatments for breast cancer.
Our lobbying efforts in Albany resulted in a tax bill that provided hundreds of thousands of dollars for hospitals and scientists researching breast and prostate cancer in New York State.
1 in 9 was responsible for forcing insurance companies to pay for reconstruction after breast resection during treatment, as it was formerly considered a cosmetic procedure instead of a necessary one. We also spearheaded the fight to include dense breast mammograms as part of the insurance-covered cancer screening process.
1 in 9 raised the funds for the National Cancer Institute to conduct an in-depth $20 million study on Long Island, entitled the Long Island Breast Cancer Study Project, to determine if water quality, environmental quality, electromagnetic fields, or chemical pesticides contributed to a higher rate of cancer.
1 in 9 has run a Soccer on the Beach tournament for over thirteen years to raise money for research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Dr. Michael Wigler, who discovered the P-Ten breast cancer gene, uses the funds to research how and why the P-Ten breast cancer gene causes breast cancer in otherwise healthy women.
We founded the Legal Advocacy Project, in partnership with the Nassau and Suffolk Counties Bar Association, to set up pro bono programs for breast cancer patients and survivors.
We expanded our focus from breast cancer to all forms of cancer, supporting every patient touched by cancer.
We recently petitioned the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C. to intervene in the healthcare industry and stop pharmaceutical companies from unnecessarily raising the prices of cancer drugs.