Posted on September 28, 2004 at 9:59 a.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Alabama’s Black Belt region will take on a pinkish tinge this weekend when cancer-fighters in the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Deep South Network for Cancer Control place pink ribbons on local businesses and other landmarks.

The effort will highlight the network’s second annual Breast Cancer Awareness Rally on Saturday, from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. at the Carl Morgan-Selma Convention Center. The event, free to the public, will welcome community health advisors (CHAs) and other participants from 11 counties in the Deep South Network — Bullock, Choctaw, Dallas, Greene, Hale, Lowndes, Macon, Marengo, Perry, Sumter and Wilcox.

CHAs are local laypeople who have been trained by the Deep South Network to communicate cancer awareness and other health messages to their friends and neighbors.

The rally will provide women in those counties the chance to sign up for reduced-cost mammograms through the Alabama Breast and Cervical Early detection Program.

Keynote speaker will be Birmingham native Frank Jackson, program director for the National Cancer Institute’s Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities, which provides funding for the network. A highlight of the event will be an oratorical contest.

Funded in 2000, the Deep South Network is a collaboration that targets two poor rural regions — the Black Belt and the Mississippi Delta — and two urban areas, Jefferson County and the Hattiesburg/Laurel area of Mississippi.

The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center and the University of Southern Mississippi, along with Tuskegee University and the University of Alabama, are partners in the effort.

The UAB Cancer Center is the only institution in a five-state area to be designated as “comprehensive” by the federal government. It has maintained this designation for more than 30 years by meeting strict peer-reviews of its research, treatment and community outreach programs.