Eat and Drink for Pink at Fat Patty’s benefitted the West Virginia Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening Program Thursday. The event was sponsored by the American Medical Women’s Association.

Fat Patty’s aims to raise money for women to receive free screenings and to encourage women to seek preventative screenings for early cancer detection.

J. P. Meadows, president of AMWA, is a first year medical student at Marshall University.

“We are doing the event to raise money for the West Virginia Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening Program,” Meadows said. “That program allows women to come in and get breast and cervical cancer screenings free of charge, give them information, teach them how to self-exam and about general women’s health.”

Last year’s event was able to raise close to $1,000. Meadows said the goal this year was to exceed last year’s total donations.

“Throughout the whole month of October you can’t go to Wal-Mart without buying anything pink,” Meadows said. “People have kind of lost how important women’s health is. We have a lot of different things, breast cancer is more prevalent in us, and if you catch it early it is completely treatable and you can usually go into remission. If you catch it late, there is not a lot we can do. It’s the same for cervical cancer, especially in younger women. The earlier we can catch it, they can keep their reproductive organs and go on to have families, whereas, if they are not getting screened and not having these tests done they may have to have a hysterectomy and not be able to carry their own children. I think we lose sight of what exactly the cause is for.”

Fat Patty’s helped make the event possible by donating 10 percent from every bill for the night.

“We try to help them every year,” said Benjamin Johnson, manager at Fat Patty’s. “Everybody knows somebody that has been affected by cancer, so we try to help everyone. I know we’re just one business but hopefully it helps the cause.”

Along with the donations from each bill, the AMWA had a 50/50 raffle for guests to enter and provided important information on both breast and cervical cancer.

Kelsie Lively can be contacted at [email protected].