Here’s the article without the vid:

Thanks to the effort of one New Yorker, many women were able to get free, potentially life-saving breast cancer screening this month. NY1’s Shazia Khan filed the following report.
This year, St. Vincent’s Hospital gave more free mammograms in a single month than ever before to women who are under-insured or un-insured thanks to the efforts of Marisa Acocella Marchetto.

Marchetto started the Cancer Vixen fund to provide the free screenings three years ago.

“If you find breast cancer early you have a 98 percent survival rate,” said Marchetto. “That’s the closest thing we have to a cure, so that’s why these screenings are so crucial.”

For Marchetto, a routine checkup four years ago turned out to be anything but routine, when her doctor found a lump in her breast. Hours later, she was at St. Vincent’s getting a mammogram, but she did not have health insurance.

“That was a nightmare!” she said.

But she was diagnosed three weeks before her wedding day, and afterwards her husband’s health plan paid for her treatment. She’s now in remission and documented her journey through her book, Cancer Vixen.

“The book is terrific because it does take away a lot of the fear or the seriousness,” said Marchetto’s surgeon, Dr. Christopher Mills. “There are a million serious different books out there and I think that it tells a story and it delivers a message in a much less frightening way.”

Marchetto says she created the fund because she wanted uninsured women like Julia Szabo to always have the option to be screened for breast cancer. Twice a year, the hospital is able to give free mammograms.

“I probably would not have gotten the mammogram, which is an awful thing to admit, but I think I am not alone and I think that attitude crosses all sorts of lines and all barriers of class and race,” she said.

Through fund raisers, the sale of T-shirts and her book she is able to provide almost 250 women a year with free mammograms.

“If we tell all the women out there to tell their mothers, to tell their sisters, to tell their best friends to get screened and get screened early, and if we fund breast cancer research, then we can help make this world a pink world without cancer,” said Marchetto.

So for making it possible for many women to get the care they need and making it free, Marisa Acocella Marchetto is the New Yorker of the Week.

For more information call 212-604-7000 or go to SVCMC.org.