New website launched provides details on breast cancer risks faced by younger women

Oct 1 2009

A website launched to coincide with National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, at www.earlyactawareness.org, provides a powerful focal point for efforts to pass the EARLY Act. Created by NeoMatrix, makers of the HALO® Breast Pap Test, the site is an easy way for EARLY Act supporters to tell their U.S. senators to support the bill.

The EARLY Act would implement a national education campaign about the risks that young adult women (under 45) face from breast cancer. The bill, with $9 million per year in proposed funding for five years, would also provide assistance to young women who have the disease.

The legislation has majority support in the House of Representatives, where there are 365 cosponsors. More than 30 senators are cosponsors, but the measure does not yet have majority support in the Senate.

The new website provides details on the EARLY Act and the breast cancer risks faced by younger women. It also has tools to help women assess their breast cancer risk and improve their breast health.

“This site is a valuable contribution to getting the EARLY Act passed,” said Maimah Karmo, a breast cancer survivor, young mother and founder of the nonprofit Tigerlily Foundation. “Working together, advocacy groups, companies and individuals can generate enough support to pass this crucially important legislation – but only if we communicate to our senators how important the EARLY Act is.”

Karmo and the Tigerlily Foundation are national leaders in creating and supporting the EARLY Act. She is one of the spokeswomen for this year’s National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

The EARLY Act and the new website challenge the outdated notions that young adult women don’t get breast cancer and there is little that can be done for their breast health.

Nationally, about 36,000 new breast cancers cases are diagnosed annually in women under age 50 – more than the total number of cervical and ovarian cancers combined. Breast cancer is the leading cause of death in American women ages 15-54.

Improved detection methods plus risk-assessment tools such as the HALO Breast Pap Test provide powerful new ways to enhance breast health. There are now established methods for reducing the threat of breast cancer in women identified as higher-risk. But before the development of HALO, there was no method for conveniently identifying patients who could benefit from these preventative regimens.

HALO is a low-cost, 5-minute, noninvasive test that helps determine an individual woman's risk of developing breast cancer, allowing women at increased risk to take risk reduction measures and be screened more frequently with methods that are more effective at detecting small, early-stage tumors.

http://www.neomatrix.com/