Steppin’ Out in Pink brings in $443,000 for breast cancer programs at Gundersen

Over 4,000 participants helped raise $443,000 at last month’s Steppin’ Out In Pink event — $40,000 more than last year.

The fundraiser, which funds remain local, supports breast cancer research and breast cancer patients through the Gundersen Medical Foundation. The Kabara Institute will receive $100,000 from the Steppin’ Out event, with another $50,000 going to the Paula’s Purse cancer patient fund.

Dr. Kristopher Lofgren, a Gundersen research scientist who studies cancer, said at Tuesday’s new conference that funding will help his research into how cancer is affected by genes and proteins.

Lofgren spoke along with fellow physician Dr. Paraic Kenny, director of the Kabara Cancer Research Institute at Gundersen, who said fundraising helps continue experiments with new treatments.

“We’ve treated breast cancer patients with drugs that would typically only ever be seen by a lung cancer patient,” Kenny said. “These are drugs that would not be effective in 99 percent of breast cancer patients, but when we can find that 1 percent of patients, that needle in the haystack, it really offers the opportunity to give that patient access to an entirely different standard of care.”

Gundersen regional president, Heather Schimmers, helped the hospital celebrate the fundraising success.

“I never in a million years would have thought that I could join an organization that does the work that we do here,” Schimmers said. “This is not normal, this is not what other health care organizations do, and there certainly aren’t communities that rally around this kind of work.”

This was the 19th year Steppin’ Out in Pink conducted in La Crosse with sponsorship by Gundersen. The fundraising walk happens every year on the second Saturday of September.