Anticipation is building for a project that has inspired great enthusiasm from the start. If everything goes according to plan, build-out of the new Carol Ann Read Breast Health Center will begin in early summer 2006. Already, key staff is on board and eagerly awaiting the move in 2007 to the 11,000-square-foot site on the first floor of the Summit Campus’ Providence Pavilion.

“The Carol Ann Read Breast Health Center will be the only one of its kind in the East Bay,” says Meridithe Mendelsohn, M.P.A., the center’s manager. She served in a similar post at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center before coming to Alta Bates Summit in 2004. “Our center will be staffed by breast health specialists devoted to reducing a woman’s risk of breast cancer, providing state-of-the-art treatments and conducting breast cancer research. In my mind, we’ll have the best of all worlds: the same level of expertise and access to the latest research as in university settings, but our services will be easier to access. Having this level of care in our community is really important.”

Alta Bates Summit’s comprehensive breast health care is unmatched by any East Bay medical center. Among the new center’s many services will be:

• clinical breast examination
• High-Risk and Prevention Program, including genetic counseling
• breast imaging: including digital mammography and magnetic resonance imaging
• multidisciplinary treatment planning, including surgeons, oncologists, radiologists, pathologists, plastic surgeons, and primary care physicians
• research
• Lymphedema Program
• the Medical Center’s many outreach and support groups

“This is an opportunity to create a much-needed center in the East Bay,” says Mendelsohn. “Everyone is excited about the possibilities.”

To find out more about the Carol Ann Read Breast Health Center, call Meridithe Mendelsohn, M.P.A., at (510) 869-8735.