By Emily Younker

eyounker@joplinglobe.com

The Carl Junction post office is bedecked in pink this month for breast cancer awareness.

But the real focus is on a small, blue and gold stamp that depicts a woman doing a breast self-exam.

Postmaster Sharon Clark is selling them for 55 cents each. She said she plans to donate 11 cents per stamp to breast cancer research “to find a wonderful word: a cure.”

Clark, a breast and uterine cancer survivor, said her goal is to sell $10,000 worth — more than 18,000 stamps — this month and donate the proceeds, about $2,000, to national research programs.

The National Cancer Institute, the country’s principal agency for cancer research, says it spent $572.6 million — almost 12 percent of its annual budget — on breast cancer research in 2008. That’s more than double what it spent on research for lung cancer, the most prevalent cancer nationwide.

Julie Kapp, assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Missouri, is studying young women and mammography under a two-year, $165,000 grant from the institute.

Her research focuses on women younger than 40 who have had mammograms. Accepted guidelines recommend that most women begin getting mammograms at age 40.

“Breast cancers in women younger than 40 can be deadlier than breast cancers in women over 40, but these are very rare,” Kapp said. “There are a number of harms associated with too much screening, such as radiation exposure and if you are told to come in for additional tests when there really is no cancer.”

Kapp said her goal is to understand the women who are getting mammograms at an early age.

“The long-term goal is to better identify which young women would benefit from early mammography so they can get the care they need, and the other women can focus on diseases that may be a bigger risk to them, such as heart disease,” Kapp said.

Other agencies

Other federal government agencies funding cancer research include the National Institutes of Health, which encompasses the Cancer Institute, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Breast Cancer Research Program, a division of the Defense Department, funds research projects aimed at eradicating breast cancer.