Breast cancer fighter launches nonprofit for mammogram, life insurance awareness

WASHINGTON — October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and as WUSA9 celebrates survivors this month, we also want to uplift those still fighting.

Stacy Putina is only 33, and currently in the hospital as her team works to treat breast cancer that’s spread to her liver.

As she’s going through her own struggle, she started a nonprofit to advocate for women to get screened at a younger age.

“When I started the nonprofit, my main purpose was to make sure that young women in their twenties and thirties enforce and let the doctor know that I want a mammogram,” Putina said. “But because I've even had during some of my community events, I've had several young women say I asked my doctor and she told me no and I'm like this, this has to stop, this has to end.”

Putina went in for a breast reduction surgery in 2021 to help with back pain. But a week after her surgery, her doctors called and told her they found cancerous cells in the breast tissue they removed. 

The experience left her wondering, why didn't she get a mammogram before her reduction surgery?

"A lot of doctors are declining women in their twenties a mammogram," Putina said. "But I feel like, had I got that mammogram when I had initially asked in my twenties, maybe I could have caught the breast cancer then.

According to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, breast cancer diagnoses in women under 50 have been rising by more than 2% annually over the past 5 years, even though the incidence rate for women under 40 is still low.

Her nonprofit is called Breast Assured, and it also encourages young people to purchase life insurance. 

She said she had never thought about that, but now that she’s battling cancer, she’s working to make sure her 12- and 7-year-old daughters are taken care of if she has to leave them. But when Putina calls around to life insurance companies, no one will give her a policy because of her diagnosis.

She’s been a teacher for years in D.C. schools, so she’s been working to include information on life insurance as part of the curriculum in high school.

“Before you go to college, get life insurance or they'll be stuck in the same position that I'm stuck in,” Putina said she wants to tell them. “And I just want everyone to really, really focus on your health. Your health is important and a lot of young people don't.”

Since she can’t get life insurance, she started a GoFundMe to help her family. You can find that page here.