Community Health Network to provide clinical support and volunteers for Indy's Super Cure

Network employees to volunteer time, expertise and breast tissue samples for project

Indianapolis, IN---Community Health Network will provide clinical support and volunteers for Indy’s Super Cure, a massive two-day event to obtain healthy breast tissue for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Tissue Bank at IU Simon Cancer Center, which will serve as the kick-off to Super Bowl week in Indianapolis. Six Community Breast Care physicians, Timothy Goedde, M.D., Robert Goulet, M.D., Christina Kim, M.D., S. Chace Lottich, M.D., Nate Thepjatri, M.D., and Erin Zusan, M.D., along with more than 100 other Community Health Network employees, will volunteer onsite January 28 and 29 during Indy’s Super Cure, in an attempt to reach a goal of 700 tissue donors.

The Komen Tissue Bank is the only repository in the world to collect normal breast tissue and match it with serum, plasma and DNA. Leading breast cancer researchers believe the Komen Tissue Bank may be one of the keys to finding a cure for breast cancer. The focus of this tissue collection event is on minority women who are healthy and have not developed breast cancer. International researchers will study how normal tissue develops into malignant tissue, one key to ultimately finding a cure for the disease that strikes one in eight American women.

Community Breast Care, an integrated physician group at Community Health Network, is participating in the project with its entire team of physicians, who will perform a minimally-invasive procedure to collect the healthy tissue samples. In addition, Community’s Serve 360° employee volunteer initiative will assist Indy’s Super Cure, a project of the 2012 Indianapolis Super Bowl Host Committee, by offering volunteers who will serve as greeters, hosts, laboratory assistants, computer assistants, height/weight data collectors, phlebotomists, and surgical assistants at the event. Community employees are also volunteering to donate healthy tissue for the project.

“Each Super Bowl tries to leave a positive mark on the community where the game is played,” said Linda Hajduk, vice president of organizational effectiveness for Community Health Network. “However, this particular Super Bowl project has the potential to save lives in years to come, and Community Health Network is excited to play a major role it making it successful.”

The large volume of tissue samples to be collected at the event, from about 350 donors each day, is made possible by the ATEC® minimally-invasive auto breast biopsy device. It allows physicians to extract healthy tissue from the donor’s breast in a quick and minimally-invasive manner. The device was developed by Timothy Goedde, M.D., breast surgical oncologist at Community Health Network.

“This entire tissue bank project has the potential to unlock some of the mysteries of breast cancer, not only for treatment advances, but also for prevention,” said Goedde. “I am happy that Community is a part of this project.”

Community Health Network has opened two locations this month to host orientation sessions with city-wide volunteers participating in Indy’s Super Cure.

About Community Health Network
Ranked among the nation’s most integrated healthcare systems, Community Health Network is Central Indiana’s leader in access to innovative and compassionate healthcare services, where and when patients need them—in hospitals, in convenient health pavilions and doctor’s offices, in the workplace, at schools, in the home and online. As a non-profit health system with multiple sites of care and affiliates throughout Indiana, Community’s full continuum of care integrates hundreds of physicians, acute care and specialty hospitals, surgery centers, physician offices, home care services, walk-in care centers and employer health services. To put the needs and the convenience of patients first, Community pioneers advanced treatments and world-class health information technologies, with a focus on ease of access to exceptional care.