Necessities Bag Sacramento Inc. (NBS) is a non-profit organization founded in April, 2007 by a Sacramento breast cancer activist who wanted to make a difference in the lives of mastectomy patients.

  Read more about Ellen

NBS is the first Northern California affiliate of Necessities Inc, a CT-based organization that provides Necessities Bags – totes filled with informative, comfort and wound care items, distributed through health care providers to women who are facing mastectomies due to breast cancer.

Volunteers collect supplies, sew the handmade pillows, assemble the Necessities Bags and distribute them to oncology nurses, surgeons, and cancer navigators who give the bags directly to their patients in the few days before their surgeries.

Letters from Sacramento recipients of Necessities Bags confirm that this outreach has a huge impact on women who are confronting the loss of one or both breasts. Read More.   

On average, NBS distributes 20 – 30 Necessities Bags per month through the health care providers listed below.
In 2008, NBS distributed a total of 322 Necessities Bags.

Sutter Health Sierra Region
Lisa Guiguis, M.D. Breast Surgeon

Breast Cancer Navigator Mary Pare, RN
Sutter Health Website   

The Cancer Center of UC Davis Medical Center
Julie Thornton Senegor, RN, Patient Navigator

www.ucdavis.edu

Mercy General Hospital
Joleen Benoit, RN BSN
Gwen Replogle, RN BSN of Mercy Specialty Programs
Colleen Lowry, RN MN
Thiru Rajagopal M.D., FACS

www.chw.edu
 

Mercy San Juan Medical Group
Joelle Jakobsen, MD, Cancer Surgeon
Bev Nicholson, RN, Oncology Nurse, Mercy Cancer Center

Patrick O'Malley, M.D.
Mercy Hospital of Folsom

Darrow Haagensen, M.D.
Methodist Hospital

Necessities Bags packed and ready for delivery