BY JENNIFER GOODSTEIN | October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month — a time for us all to redouble our efforts to eradicate the second leading killer of women in America.
NYC Community Media and Community News Group’s annual “pink paper” (our print edition is printed on pink paper this week) is dedicated to our local resources, researchers, support teams and survivors — because we share the struggle, and are mindful of the sobering statistics and excruciating toll of this deadly disease:
• Roughly 40,610 women and 440 men will die from breast cancer before the year’s end, according to estimates of the American Cancer Society.
• One in eight American women will be diagnosed with the disease in her lifetime.
• Every two minutes, an American woman is diagnosed with breast cancer.
• Every 13 minutes, a woman dies of breast cancer in our country.
• About 85 percent of cases occur in women with no family history of breast cancer.
Like most people, we have had friends and family battle cancer. Anyone who has watched the impact of this terrible disease on sufferers and their loved ones understands the urgency for a cure.
The good news is that progress is being made. Lisa Malwitz, our first woman profiled in 2014, just celebrated her five-year anniversary of being cancer-free.
More good news:
• There are more than 2.8 million breast cancer survivors in the United States today.
• The five-year relative survival rate for female invasive breast cancer patients has jumped from 75 percent in the mid-1970s to 90 percent today.
These strides can be attributed in no small measure to ordinary people who rise to the extraordinary occasion, demonstrating time and again the incredible strength and power of unity when affliction strikes.
Breast Cancer Awareness Month is an opportunity for our newspapers to share the stories of how local communities come together to battle breast cancer, and herald those suffering for the spirit needed to fight this disease during their difficult journey to good health.
We hope you enjoy our “pink paper” edition and its inspirational stories. If you are looking for additional details about breast cancer, opportunities to volunteer or resources for someone fighting the disease, please reach out to the American Cancer Society at cancer.org/about-us/local/new-york.html.
Goodstein is publisher, NYC Community Media
