President Obama announced that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and there are many ideas for which you can promote breast cancer awareness, not just in October, but all the year round. If you work in the health care field, you might want to remind your doctors to suggest to their female patients to get mammograms. Women are more likely to have mammograms done when their doctor suggests they have one. Approximately 94 percent of women had at least 1 mammogram in a two year period due to their doctors suggesting they have one. Doctors, especially male doctors, may not think of suggesting every woman from age 40 and up have mammograms every 1 to 2 years.

Another idea to promote breast cancer awareness is to ask your doctors and other health care facilities to play a prerecorded breast cancer awareness message that clients can listen to when they are on hold. Most people hear music when they are put on hold, but if you could get the health care professionals to change their messages to meaningful information about breast cancer awareness, this would benefit many women.

As part of breast cancer awareness, you could ask the office managers in grocery stores, drug stores, doctors’ offices if you could post a poster from the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month’s educational campaign. You could list a toll free phone number for women to call for reduced cost mammograms. Everyone recognizes the breast cancer awareness emblem; women and men are very likely to read the sign and jot down the number. In fact, you could put pamphlets and other literature inside these establishments that list the phone number, email addresses and other pertinent information.

Another idea is to ask your employer to post a message about breast cancer awareness in with their paychecks. Most companies give paychecks out in an envelope; even the employees to get direct deposit may get their pay stub in an envelope. If a brochure or a pamphlet were in with pay stub, this would be a good reminder for women to get their mammograms. So many families don’t have health insurance, so any literature about how to obtain a mammogram at reduced cost would be welcomed.

Another idea is to contact your American Cancer Society and ask how you could schedule a breast cancer awareness event in your community. If you have a community center in your town, you could ask to reserve the center for a specific day and hold a breast cancer awareness event there. You could ask one of your local doctors to donate their time to speak to women about breast cancer and the importance of diagnosing it early.

Your church is a good place to speak about breast cancer awareness. If you are comfortable to speak in front of a congregation, or if you want to call a woman’s meeting after church hours, this would be a good way to “get the word out” about breast cancer awareness. It would be good to offer breast health education at church, because you can reach many concerned women and men. Men should be concerned about breast cancer also, because breast cancer can affect their wives, mothers, and other female loved ones. It should also be mentioned, in mixed company, that breast cancer is not just a woman’s disease. Men have a small amount of breast tissue, and they too can develop breast cancer. Men over age 50 are more likely to get breast cancer. Approximately 1500 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer each year, and approximately 300 men will die from breast cancer each year. Yes, women are much more likely to develop breast cancer than men; however, the number of men developing breast cancer and dying from it is significant enough to mention it in a breast cancer awareness event.

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