Polo Ralph Lauren Creates Spanish Version of Cancer Center Web Site.

The Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention in Harlem and Bowne Global Solutions (BGS) announced today that they have teamed up to launch a Spanish-language Web site to fight cancer.

One of the Center’s overall objectives is to reverse the historically low rates of colon and cervical cancer screenings among the over 60,000 Hispanics living in Harlem, New York. As part of this effort the Spanish language version of http://www.ralphlaurencenter.org was created to communicate the message to the community it serves that early cancer detection saves lives.

For example, only 38% of Hispanic women over age 40 receive regular mammograms, and breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among Hispanics, according to the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute. Also the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Department of Health and Human Services report that lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths among Hispanics. Compounding the prevalence of various cancers in the Hispanic population is the fact that uninsured Hispanics are two to three times more likely to have cancer diagnosed at a later stage, making it less treatable according to the American College of Physicians. As such the Spanish language site is an integral part of the hospital’s early cancer detection mission.

Located in Harlem, the Center had more than 6,000 patient visits over a 12-month period, and a considerable number of these visits were by Latinos. BGS, Polo Ralph Lauren, and all partners involved in the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention hope the launch of the new site gives the Center a reliable and informative resource to reach not only residents of El Barrio who are at higher risk for cancer, but Latinos throughout the New York City area.

The Center’s Medical Director, Dr Harold P. Freeman, noted that, “the site was designed to provide another outlet for the Center to reach not only potential cancer patients, but Spanish speaking members of the medical community as well as potential donors.”

“Reaching the diverse ethnicity of the Harlem Hispanic community with one Web site was a difficult challenge because Puerto Rican, Mexican and Latin American dialects bear little similarity to one another,” said BGS President and CEO Jim Fagan. “But because of the dangerously low rate of cancer screenings in the area, BGS was able to deploy a team of translators with expertise in different Spanish dialects to create one Spanish language web site to help the Center attempt to reverse the low cancer detection trend.”