Avon does more than just sell makeup. The Avon Foundation recently gave a $750,000 grant to the Emory Winship Cancer Institute and the Avon Comprehensive Breast Center at Grady Memorial Hospital.

The grant, which is part of Campaign Emory’s $1.6 billion fund-raising effort, will be used sponsor staffing, research and community outreach education and clinical programs.

The Avon Foundation has given about $11 million to Emory Winship and Grady since 2000. The Center at Grady must apply for the grant each year.

The Avon Comprehensive Breast Cancer Center, which opened in 2003, is one of eight Avon breast centers in the country and is meant to help “under-served” residents of Dekalb and Fulton counties, according to Sheryl Gabram-Mendola, director of the Avon Comprehensive Breast Center at Grady and principal investigator for the Avon grant.

The grant has helped increase the number of biopsies, mammograms and ultrasounds from 11,000 in 2005 to 16,000 this past year. Also, about 20 percent more patients have visited the center in the past year than in 2005.

“The program has grown very quickly,” Gabram-Mendola said.

Currently, the Avon Comprehensive Breast Center is working on four major research projects ranging from one that seeks to determine why African American women with a certain type of tumors have a higher mortality rate than Caucasian women with such tumors to another that examines how factors such as residential segregation and income affect breast cancer survival for women in Georgia.

“The grant will definitely save lives throughout Atlanta and the state of Georgia,” Gabram-Mendola said.

In terms of outreach, the center is using part of the grant money to train women from the community to give presentations at health fairs.

Another outreach program the grant will fund is Ladies in Pink, which is composed of breast cancer survivors who comfort women in the clinic at Grady after they are diagnosed with breast cancer and work to dispel the myths associated with the disease.

Gabram-Mendola said Avon asked the center at Grady to cut back on the amount of money requested for the grant due to the current economic recession.

She said the center will offer the same quality of service but community outreach programs and research projects will be more “cost-effective.”

The Avon Comprehensive Breast Center at Grady is the only center of this kind located in a city without an Avon Breast Cancer walk.

“We are very lucky Avon continues to fund us as a center,” Gabram-Mendola said. “We are thrilled in this economic climate to get $750,000. We are extremely grateful for this grant.”

— Contact Molly Davis