VIDEO: Breast cancer awareness is 'critical' year-round

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October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and we see it, you know, so many campaigns focused on breast cancer awareness during that month. And I think that's really important, because it does hopefully drive people to think about getting a mammogram if they haven't, or to, you know go check out that lump in the breasts that they have. But it's a really important point to know that breast cancer awareness is not just in October, and it exists all year round. And I think October has taken on this kind of quality, but really, you know, patients get breast cancer 365 days of the year. And so what we do in October, it's really important to make sure we're talking about screening and awareness, and raising money for research, not just in October.

The challenge of October is that it can be very triggering for survivors, and thrivers, and previvors, because everything is pink, and I think we also have to think about the implications of that for our patients. And lastly, I always talk about pink washing, we see a lot of that in October, and what that means is we put a pink ribbon on it, and it says, "Oh, it goes to breast cancer research." And I urge patients, and physicians, and anyone who's in the field to really think about where is that money going. You know, we see pink ribbons on everything, but how much of that money is really going to research? So I think breast cancer awareness is critical, but I do feel that we should do it all year round, as well as raising money for breast cancer research all year-round.