How You are Directly Helping Women Farmers Beat Cervical Cancer

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Partnering with Grounds for Health is one of the most exciting and important aspects of our business. At Sip & Melt, we firmly believe in meeting challenges and creating sustainable solutions to problems. 

Our pledge to donate $1 of each subscription box we sell to Grounds for Health is not just a monetary expression of support, but a way to include the community in our partnership.

Sip & Melt was founded by a Registered Nurse, who knows firsthand how problems can be solved through education, innovation, and process improvement. The more the public understands about how and why a problem exists, the better equipped it is at solving it.

We are passionate about coffee and chocolate, but we are equally aware of the people involved in making our quality products. We understand, as should you, that not everyone in the world has access to preventative medical care; in fact, statistically speaking, the majority of our world's human inhabitants do not. When you drink your morning coffee, or nibble on a dark chocolate bar, does it cross your mind how this delicious experience came to be? 

[Grounds for Health]
Did you know that women make up over 70% of the workforce that picks, sorts, and processes coffee and cacao beans? And over 80% of women in the world diagnosed with cervical cancer live in developing nations? Why? 

While there is no connection between cervical cancer and coffee, there is a connection between lack of prevention services and cervical cancer. This cancer is the number one cause of death of women in low income settings worldwide. 

Cervical cancer is treatable, if caught early. In fact, the cancer takes twenty years to develop, and can be treated for less than $28, and in a single visit—if caught within the first five years.


If every woman was screened just once in her lifetime, global cancer rates would drop by 30%; if screened twice, 60%!

For over 20 years, Grounds for Health has been committed to women’s health in the developing world. Their organization envisions a planet in which all women are protected from the threat of cervical cancer by timely and high-quality prevention services. To date, Grounds for Health efforts have resulted in more than 72,000 women screened for cervical cancer, more than 5,200 women treated, and 460+ community healthcare providers trained.


[Clinical Director, Ellen Starr, MSN, WHNP and her team]
Grounds for Health aspires to be on the cutting edge of innovations that will transform cervical cancer prevention at a global scale.

Currently, they are partnered with MobileODT, a connected health company who uses an advanced optical technology to turn a smartphone into a mobile, point-of-care tool that can be used in remote locations to take biomedical images. Alongside this technology, Grounds for Health trains clinical staff to perform cervical cancer checks on women in the most remote locations, who otherwise have limited access (if any at all) to care and education. 

MobileODT has been partnered with Global Good (a collaboration between Bill Gates and Intel aimed at developing technology solutions to the world's most difficult health problems) and their EVA—Enhanced Visual Assessmenttechnology system has been approved by the FDA for sale and marketing in the USA, as of December 2016. 


[Grounds for Health]
For more than ten years, Grounds for Health implemented the Single Visit Approach to care—same-day visual inspection with screening and treatment—and were among the first organizations to embrace this approach as the standard model for care.  The World Health Organization has since endorsed this approach in their cervical cancer prevention guidelines, and it has become a model for many other organizations.

In 2016, Grounds for Health screened 13,278 women and treated 1,249 for cervical cancer.

In 2017, Grounds for Health will be expanding to new areas in Ethiopia and Kenya, with numerous training and screening programs led by a talented group of local and international staff.

Their goal: to screen at least 17,000 women and treat 1,900+ for cervical cancer in developing countries.


We stand by their work and will remain an active, supportive, and enthusiastic voice for their company mission.

We hope you will join us!




-Sip & Melt

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