Thinking Prevention

The preventorium also has a Spanish-speaking nurse and a "patient navigator," Diana P. Garcia, who guides patients to clinics that provide screening mammograms for free or very low cost. Garcia refers patients who need follow-up care to physicians who take low-income, uninsured patients. If needed, she tries to get them enrolled in cancer treatment trials at the National Institutes of Health or into cancer clinics or hospitals that readily accept low-income patients. (To date, the clinic has discovered 71 cancers, almost half of them breast cancer.) Garcia also guides patients to health coverage they may be able to receive, and Huerta helps connect them to primary care physicians.

"But the main thing is to teach them about prevention, because as a culture we don't think we need to see a doctor until we're sick," Garcia said.

Vote of Confidence

Mariluz Garcia said she was drawn to the Cancer Preventorium seven years ago after visiting a Silver Spring clinic because she was concerned about abnormal menstrual cycles; she was given a blood test. She said she had to initiate the follow-up and was told only that her bloodwork was normal. A month later, she heard Huerta's radio show and the next year went to see him. It took her two or three weeks to get an appointment then; now there is a four-month waiting list, but she keeps returning for her annual checkup.

Garcia, who is from Colombia, has no health insurance and pays her $120 out of pocket. Is it worth the money? "Oh, yes!" she said. "Thank God, nothing has happened to me -- yet."

Emilia Uriarte arrived at the Cancer Preventorium at the insistence of a friend, who made an appointment for her as a 40th birthday present. Her friend is a fan of Huerta's shows and is a patient herself.

"I came, but I didn't think it was necessary for me because I never feel bad," said Uriarte, who is from Honduras. As is customary in her country, she admitted, she thought that "older people" like her 60-year-old mother are candidates for doctor visits. Besides, in her country, most people depend on a pharmacist to recommend medicine or on grandparents or other elders to prescribe folkloric remedies.

When Uriarte left Honduras at the age of 27, she said, she had never seen a doctor. Here, she saw one 10 years ago, when she gave birth to her daughter.

Now that she has seen Huerta, she understands "that every April I need to get checked," Uriarte said. "The doctor was very nice . . . and I liked the way he educated me."

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