With October comes the inevitable pinking of every consumer good imaginable. Our Daily Green is pinked to the peak. We honestly find all the pink aggravating, not encouraging.
Why wouldn't a blog dedicated to healthy living and environmentally friendly choices be on board with all this pink? Well, we haven't even have to say "why" we're going pink and our readers know.This means that since the point of the pink is to promote awareness, the campaign has been successful. Pink needs to move past buying ribbon shaped merchandise in pink boxes and learn more about prevention and cures.
In other words, Our Daily Green is not pink for the reasons thought. Quite frankly, we're pink because we are blushing with embarrassment at the trivialization of the insidious disease of breast cancer. We are not interested in catchy colors or cutesy slogans to make us "aware". We are past aware and concerned with cure, and want to use the word cure without being sued. We believe it's time to get past branding and marketing and participate in a meaningful way in the discussion.
We are now a volunteer for the Breast Cancer Action network, hoping to share their information and principles. We will have a weekly feature this entire month of October about different steps we can take together to learn about risk, prevention, care, and other facts. It's time to be serious about our breasts and protecting them.
From their website:
BCAction members across the country–and world–advocate for systemic changes to end the epidemic in three strategic areas:
1. Advocate for more effective and less toxic breast cancer treatments. We work to shift the balance of power in the Food and Drug Administration’s drug approval process away from the pharmaceutical industry and toward the public interest. Our independence from pharmaceutical company funding puts us in a unique position in the breast cancer movement to advance this ambitious goal. BCAction will always put the needs of women with breast cancer first and encourage the FDA to do the same.
2. Decrease involuntary environmental exposures that put people at risk for breast cancer. BCAction is committed to the precautionary principle of public health: First, do no harm. While many breast cancer organizations offer advice on how individuals can reduce their voluntary exposures to carcinogens, the policy changes needed to eliminate these exposures for everyone require a broader social justice approach that BCAction has always provided and will continue to provide.
3. Create awareness that it is not just genes, but social injustices — political, economic, and racial inequities — that lead to disparities in breast cancer outcomes. Discussions of the social determinants of health are beginning to emerge in a number of health fields, but the cancer world still focuses on genes and differences in screening patterns. BCAction has changed many conversations in breast cancer, and we will work to change this one as well, so that people understand the social justice lens in which breast cancer needs to be seen and studied in order to change the inequities in breast cancer outcomes.
No comments :
Post a Comment