The theme of her talk reflected the name of the popular annual event: The Ribbon of Hope Luncheon.

“I am so moved, so touched, just by the title of this luncheon,” said Cate Edwards, featured speaker at the recent fund raiser hosted by Kettering Medical Center Foundation on Thursday, Oct. 12. “Hope drives us all to keep fighting — toward prevention, toward remission, toward a cure. Hope keeps working toward ensuring that everyone can afford preventative care, diagnosis services and quality treatment.”

The daughter of John Edwards and the late Elizabeth Edwards came to town to help raise funds for the Women’s Wellness Fund, which provides free screenings and prostheses to uninsured and medically under-served individuals in our community. Since its inception in 1995, more than 10,000 women in the greater Dayton area have benefited from more than $1 million in medical care. At the October luncheon, more than $70,000 was raised.

“Every time a woman goes in for a mammogram, she holds on to the hope that it will come back clean,” Edwards told the crowd gathered at the Sinclair Community College Ponitz Center. “Every time a woman diagnosed with cancer undergoes chemotherapy, or surgery or radiation, there is one sentiment getting her through it: Hope. Every time a woman completes her course of treatment and visits her doctor, she sits in front of him or her with hope in her heart that she will be declared in remission.”

Edwards, who stressed the importance of the Affordable Care Act, said that in 2008, 55 percent of all uninsured women delayed or postponed care they thought was needed. In 2011, she said, at least 19 million American women between the ages of 18 to 64 were uninsured.

“If the statistics hold, that means that this year more than 10 million women will delay or postpone care that they need,” she said.

Edwards said her mother never gave up hope, even when her cancer had metastasized to the bone and was deemed incurable.

“I don’t believe any longer I can outlive the cancer,” Elizabeth Edwards told her daughter. “But I don’t have to. I just have to outlive the cure.”