Last week, the CDC and NCI released a joint report on can­cer screen­ing that high­lights the effects of health­care dis­par­i­ties that exist among indi­vid­u­als with­out health insur­ance or access to a pri­mary care physi­cian. For breast can­cer screen­ing, Healthy Peo­ple 2020 rec­om­mends a national goal of 81.1%; how­ever, in 2010, the rate of screen­ing was only 72.4%. Rates of breast can­cer screen­ing for women with no reg­u­lar provider of health care and those with­out health insur­ance accounted for nearly half of that. Less severe trends are noted for cer­vi­cal can­cer screen­ing; how­ever, the dis­par­i­ties are even more pro­nounced for col­orec­tal screening.

This story made it to a few other media out­lets but prob­a­bly scored about a 1.5 on the “Big News Richter scale.” It was the kind of story health­care providers talk about with the pre-​​programmed res­ig­na­tion typ­i­cal of those immersed in the bat­tle for cure. It can be so hard to muster up the pas­sion required to make pre­ven­tion work. Look at the “Faces of Pre­ven­tion.” They are healthy. They have their entire lives ahead of them. They have choices. They have time.

Now, flip the coin and take a look at the “Faces of Cure.” They have per­fected the seem­ingly dichoto­mous act of bal­anc­ing fight and sur­ren­der. If we haven’t been touched in our per­sonal lives by one of them, surely we have in our work. We know them well. They are the faces and the sto­ries that com­pel us to do bet­ter, work faster, accom­plish more—to plant the flag and win the race.

Susan G. Komen for the Cure is unar­guably iconic among the many groups dri­ving research, pol­icy, and out­reach. Amer­ica has come to count on Komen as a reli­able source of infor­ma­tion in the fight against breast can­cer and a bea­con for sur­vivors. Only a few days after the CDC released its report on the state of can­cer screen­ing in the United States, Komen for the Cure announced its deci­sion to dis­con­tinue grant fund­ing to Planned Par­ent­hood ear­marked for breast can­cer screen­ing. The reac­tion to this story was imme­di­ate and vehe­ment. In the 48 or so hours that fol­lowed, pre­ven­tion was ele­vated to the celebrity sta­tus it deserves, and not just among health­care providers, or pol­icy mak­ers, or news out­lets, but by everyone—loudly. So loud that on Fri­day, Nancy G. Brinker, the founder of Komen for the Cure, issued a pub­lic apol­ogy revers­ing the foundation’s deci­sion. This was big news.

Where will pre­ven­tion go from here?  I hate to imag­ine that the only way to get a real con­ver­sa­tion about pre­ven­tion going is to steep it deeply within the polit­i­cal land­scape at the end of an elec­tion cycle. Pre­ven­tion should be cool with­out con­tro­versy and with­out excep­tion; how­ever, last week pre­ven­tion did the unimag­in­able. It sparked pas­sion­ate and empow­ered action, stim­u­lated a national con­ver­sa­tion, and ulti­mately, got results. Last week, pre­ven­tion was glamorous.