MCRD/ERR PARRIS ISLAND, S.C. -- Naval Hospital Beaufort held a symposium on early prevention and detection of breast cancer at the Heritage Center April 30. Captain Peter Soballe, medical director, Breast Care Center, National Naval Medical Center, led attendees through a refresher course in the hopes of bringing about a renewed awareness of the importance of prevention and detection in the Primary Care clinics."We are focusing on the clinical management of risk prevention and the treatment of breast cancer," said Soballe. "It is new information and a refresher course for the primary care personnel. Technologies that are readily available and even subsidized for them are a lot of times under utilized. By necessity, they have to focus somewhere else."The focus of the symposium is to get those technologies there to be an increase of mammogram utilization," he said. "It is recommended at about age 40 annually, although, only three quarters of our beneficiaries actually do that. We think that the way to increase that, is to get the primary care involved with it."With primary care treating the bulk of service members and their families, the conference was geared toward them being able to utilize the information. That tangible information can be used to prevent many cases from growing out of control. "Hopefully the providers will order more mammograms and the women will have more mammograms done," said June Kasiak-Gambla, R.N., breast care coordinator, Breast Care Initiative Program. "We want to identify breast cancer early, because it is a big deal if you can get somebody in their twenties or thirties before they get cancer."After having fought to get the month of May to be proclaimed, by state representative Catherine Ceips and the Women's Caucus, as Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Mother's Day as Breast Cancer Awareness Day in the state of South Carolina, Kasiak-Gambla envisions the benefits of having this kind of awareness on a day that is already geared toward women. "I wanted to hit mother's day," she said. "So that way daughters can encourage their mothers to get a mammogram."With the significance of awareness already in place for some of the NHB personnel, Primary Care Clinic staff value the importance of early detection and only see the benefits of reemphasizing the information."Treatment of breast cancer involves several different aspects including prevention," said Lt. Cmdr. Mark Duncan, a family practice physician at the Naval Hospital Beaufort. "The conference provides state-of-the-art management of prevention. That would take place during well-woman examinations or annual well-woman examinations."Covering a variety of topics regarding breast cancer and prevention, Soballe has high aspirations, that it will be more readily used in the area of primary care. The hope is that the people in attendance here today, will talk with their co-workers and spread the word, said Soballe. "The bottom line for any female age 40 or over is: get a mammogram."For more information on breast cancer, visit the National Women's Health Resource Center Web site, http://www.healthywomen, or http://www.breastcancer.org.