Our Promise to Black Women
Early Detection, Early Diagnosis, the Key to Making Progress
This year, the Imperative will launch an educational campaign to get the message out - early detection and diagnosis make a difference. For Black women who are at highest risk, early detection is critically important. For Black women who have been diagnosed at the earliest stage of breast cancer when the tumor is small and localized, early diagnosis will make a difference.
For most of us, early detection and diagnosis is attainable with a few easy steps:
Have your provider show you how to perform monthly breast self-examination (BSE) and perform it faithfully at the same time each month. Many experts recommend that you examine your breasts in the shower because the soapy water makes it easier to detect lumps. Although there have been questions raised about the usefulness of such breast self-examinations, most breast lumps are found by women themselves, not their physicians, and black women simply cannot afford to forego them.
See your doctor for a regular clinical breast examination (CBE) at least once a year. If he or she will not perform the CBE, because of your age or lack of known risk factors, find another provider who will. Insist on being examined.
Have regular screening mammograms. Since breast density is one of the strongest risk factors for Black women developing breast cancer, insist on digital mammography or some of the newer more advanced technologies that will detect tumors and help predict breast cancer risks in Black women.
Breast cancer inequalities are seemingly too insurmountable; the reasons for them are complex and the solution still without evidence. Yes, progress has been made, but not enough for Black women. And that is why the Imperative has establish a National Breast Cancer Leadership Initiative aimed at galvanizing all black women’s organizations, public officials, funders and survivors in support of early detection and diagnosis - and providing the leadership needed to call for more research and funding to address these aggressive forms of breast cancer among younger black women.
To do this, breast cancer and young Black women must be a public health priority - right alongside improving treatment and finding a cure. This is a tall order, I know. But the Imperative will not stop advocating until we can reverse this downward spiral.
That’s our promise to Black women.
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by Eleanor Hinton Hoytt