UMC, volunteers create video for national competition

University Medical Center is in the running against hospitals across the United States to win $10,000 that will be donated to breast cancer research.

UMC submitted a video for the 2016 Pink Glove Dance competition and is currently in the lead.

The video was created with the help of 500 volunteers including UMC staff, breast cancer survivors, the El Paso police and fire departments and Andress High School’s JROTC.

“All we had to do was say it helps support the fight against breast cancer and they jumped right in,” said Ryan Mielke, spokesman for UMC.

Mielke said it took about two months to put the video together.

The video is also meant to give hope and encouragement to the men and women diagnosed with breast cancer.

The Centers for Disease Control reports 220,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed every year in women and about 2,000 in men.

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer among women in the United States.

Since UMC is the only El Paso hospital in the competition, Mielke said the choice is simple.

“Don’t look at any of the other videos, look at ours and vote for ours,” Mielke said.

“We need your support, we need to represent El Paso, we need to represent UMC and we have got to get these dollars to fight breast cancer.”

The competition website said it started because of the overwhelming and enthusiastic response to the original Pink Glove Dance video, where 200 people at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, Oregon, danced to the catchy tune “Down” by Jay Sean.

The video, which debuted on YouTube in 2009 and went viral.

Medline, a medical, surgical and pharmaceutical products supplier to hospitals, started the video competition in 2011.

Voters can vote once everyday. Voting ends on September 23.

Click here to watch the entire video and cast your vote.