Center sells bracelets to help fight cancer

The medical center that treats western Iowa cancer patients will get a financial boost from a new project — the sale of lightweight bracelets touting the Eppley Cancer Center. They’re like the rubber-band bracelets made famous by Lance Armstrong, the Tour de France bike-race winner and cancer survivor. Eppley’s Molly Malone says one day last summer she was in a meeting with Doctor Ken Cowan, the center’s director, when they came up with an idea. Dr. Cowan said that day “Why don’t we sell something like this for Eppley?” He suggested it be red, the color of the Nebraska Cornhuskers, and they decided it should say “Hope” on one side and the name of the University of Nebraska Medical Eppley Cancer Center on the other. The doctor now keeps telling Malone he’d like to see a bracelet on “everybody in the whole state, and half the cattle.” They’re so cheap, you can’t buy just one. To make it worth sending mail orders from the website, they sell them online in packs of ten, for 20-dollars. She says even on the UNMC campus, response is good as people have been asking her for packs of the bracelets they can sell to friends, and send the money to the cancer center. The organizers aren’t expecting to raise a major amount of money by selling the bracelets. She says the purpose mainly is to raise awareness about the cancer center and all Eppley does in the region and nationally, as well as offering the best treatment. They want to “adjust the perception” that since the center’s in Omaha the money will only benefit people in Nebraska’s largest city but she points out people come not only from all of Nebraska and western Iowa, but from Missouri and South Dakota, in fact a region from the Canadian border clear down to Texas. “We kind of fill that five-state area.” Malone says the nearest other cancer center of the University of Iowa in eastern Iowa. Malone points out cancer affects everyone, and says it’s the number-one cause of death for people under 85. If you’re not near Omaha and the UNMC campus, they sell the bracelets online at http://www.unmc.edu/cancercenter/