Nearly a year after rebranding as the Breast Cancer Collective, the Alexandria-based organization is preparing for major fundraisers in the fall to continue its work to make breast cancer screenings and treatments accessible.
The collective officially announced its rebranding as the Breast Cancer Collective last October. The name change from the National Breast Center Foundation sought to clear up confusion with other national breast cancer entities.
Dr. David Weintritt, the foundation’s founder and president who also serves as a breast surgeon at Virginia Cancer Specialists, told ALXnow the name is about more than just fundraising but utilizing community partners.
“There’s really an infinite number of ways that people can contribute, and we wanted to have a name where everyone realized that you know there’s a role that they can play that can lead to us being able to decrease the number of women in our community that are dying from breast cancer,” Weintritt said.
When Weintritt started out in practice, he noticed Alexandria had breast cancer fundraising events to support patients with financial or access challenges to getting mammogram screenings. However, the fundraiser was limited to Alexandria residents and stopped when the organizer moved out of state.
“I saw this immediate gap,” Weintritt said. “There was an existing gap based upon a very limited geography, and then immediately all the fundraising efforts, or at least the majority of them, disappeared.”
The foundation, now the Breast Cancer Collective, was formed in 2014 to address that gap. The intent of the organization remains the same: to address the problem of worse breast cancer outcomes due to lack of access to mammograms, providers who can diagnose it, and cancer care. Working largely in the D.C. region, the collective focuses on helping women 40 and over access mammograms they’re recommended to get due to breast cancer risk.
Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death for women in the U.S., according to the American Cancer Society. Most insurances will cover mammograms for women 40 and over; however, the cost without insurance can be in the hundreds. For women who have a breast lump and need additional screening, diagnostic mammograms could come with out-of-pocket costs between $500 and $1,000.
“Whether they’re in the hundreds or the thousands … we find a way with our funds and with these community partners and with mammogram facilities throughout D.C., Maryland, or Virginia, and we get these women safely to these screening days, so that they can have access to the same life-saving screening that we all would want to have access to,” Weintritt said.
Weintritt says patients with limited funds may be choosing between getting screenings or paying for rent or food. The Breast Cancer Collective is put in touch with patients that cannot afford screenings, and the organization will also help with additional treatments like a biopsy or surgery.
“This is about identifying cancer at an earlier stage, and then once it’s identified, making sure that the whole continuity of care that someone would expect to be available is made available,” Weintritt said.
While the organization’s breast cancer prevention is largely targeted toward the higher-risk group of women 40 and older, Weintritt says women are recommended to get “an appropriate risk assessment” at age 25. The foundation will help with screenings for younger women whose family history puts them at a greater risk of breast cancer under age 40.
As Weintritt has remained at the helm of the organization as president, the collective recently saw a transition in its executive director role. After Martha Carucci left on July 17 to become CEO of First Tee – Greater Washington, DC, the board appointed Charlotte Hall as interim director on Aug. 17. Along with various other Alexandria roles, Hall had been executive director of the Old Town Business Association before it shut down in late 2024 following a failed Business Improvement District proposal.
The Breast Cancer Collective has two major fundraisers coming up — the ALX Pink Gala at Above ALX Community (277 S. Washington Street) on Sept. 25 and Walk to Bust Cancer at Fort Hunt Park on Oct. 18.
The ALX Pink Gala is the collective’s newest event and is a formal event to raise funds. The Walk to Bust Cancer is the largest event in terms of attendance, drawing hundreds of women and their families to raise funds for Breast Cancer Collective’s work. Participants range from breast cancer survivors and families who have lost someone to breast cancer to those working in the breast cancer realm.
Weintritt says Breast Cancer Collective keeps the event cost low to provide 95 cents from every dollar raised to its breast cancer services.
The third major fundraiser, Swing to Bust Cancer at the Belle Haven Country Club, is usually held the Monday after Mother’s Day in May.
Looking ahead to the next decade, Weintritt wants to bring Breast Cancer Collective’s model to other communities.
“Our goal, as we look to the next 10 years, is how can we scale what we’ve done to other communities, and as we’ve identified a pretty short list of recurring themes that result in women who need to be screened not getting screening, how we can then go to community partners in other parts of the U.S. and help them replicate the same kind of program that we’ve done,” Weintritt said.
