Cancer Detection
Impact Dense Breasts on Cancer Detection
provided by Angela Drinkwater
Densebreast-info launches Spanish-language web and Facebook pages to address educational need of Spanish-speaking women about the impact dense breasts on cancer detection
Organization Offers Patient Resources in 24 Languages
Dense Breast Education site DenseBreast-info (DBI) has launched a Spanish-language web site page www.SenosDensos.org and Spanish-Language Facebook page to help address the educational needs of Spanish-speaking women about the risks related to dense breasts and breast cancer screening.
Spanish is second most common language spoken in the U.S. and is the official language in 20 other countries. The Spanish-language content was developed to educate and address language barriers on the topic for these women. The popularity of the content makes clear the need. In the most recent quarter, there were over 100K visitors to DBI Spanish website content; and on Facebook over 500k clicks, 2k shares, and 2k comments (generally women with questions or sharing of their own stories).
This initiative follows the introduction of a new FDA reporting standard that will go into effect Sept 2024, which will require that all women getting mammograms be told if they have dense breasts. Until now, that key piece of life-saving information has not been shared with all women getting mammograms…whether or not they have dense breasts. Dense breasts hide cancer and yet many of the 40% of women with them don’t know that cancer may be hiding even if their mammogram is reported as “normal.” Other countries are following suit as well, with the European Society of Breast Imaging now recommending that European women also be informed about their breast density.
“I’m proud to work on this important initiative to help spread awareness about dense breasts and the need for additional breast screening to a larger Spanish-speaking population,” said Daniel Lehrer, DBI’s Spanish Language Advisor and Breast Imaging Specialist and Medical Director of CERIM in Argentina.
“Hispanic women are more likely to be diagnosed at a younger age, with more aggressive and advanced cancers, and are about 30% more likely to die from the disease than non-Hispanic white women. Availability of this information in Spanish could lead to earlier stage diagnoses and save lives.”
“Our mission is to reach as many women – and in as many languages as possible – to educate about the implications of dense tissue,” said JoAnn Pushkin, Executive Director, DenseBreast-info. “This is personal to me. I thought I was doing everything right, but a key piece of information was not being shared with me – I had dense breasts. So, mammograms missed my cancer year after year because it was hidden in dense tissue. When I finally felt a lump, it was no longer early stage. Spanish website content will give these women information I did not have. Additional screening after my mammogram could have found my cancer earlier. And as we know, finding it early matters. It can mean the difference between life and death.”
Aside from these most recent dedicated Spanish-language offerings, DenseBreast-info has long-shared translated information in 24 languages, including: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese (Cantonese, Mandarin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese.
For more information, please visit DenseBreast-info.org.
Images above were provided by Dense Breast.org
Photo of a patient looking at a tablet by Cedric Fauntleroy from pexels.com
