National Breast Cancer Awareness Month: A month-long campaign held every October to increase awareness for breast cancer and to raise funds for research into its cause, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and cure. The campaign has made great strides in educating the public about this terrible disease and high schoolers across the nation come to school in pink apparel to show their support of the cause and the people it represents. That being said, I don’t believe that Breast Cancer is as prevalent a topic as it should be in the high school health curriculum.
The Montgomery County Public Schools health curriculum has an emphasis on Physical Health while covering other areas such as Alcohol, Tobacco and other Drugs and Disease Prevention and Control. Disease Prevention and Control are ideally where cancer education should be but the unit mainly covers HIV/AIDS and STDs, while neither breast cancer nor cancer in general is ever mentioned.
Lack of proper education on cancer is an issue because cancer is the second highest cause of death in the US, accounting for a fourth of all deaths every year. Breast cancer is the second most prevalent form of cancer with up to 266,120 cases and about 40,920 deaths each year. Proper education is needed to identify major symptoms early and to go receive appropriate treatment.
Breast Cancer deaths have been going down every year due to advances in prevention and screening. Breast Cancer Awareness Month and other awareness campaigns have brought breast cancer to the limelight. In doing so, larger volumes of people are on the lookout for symptoms and getting screened to see if they have breast cancer. Breast Cancer should be more widely taught in health classes because the earlier people know about Breast Cancer, the earlier they can get treatment and avoid more serious complications down the line.
Article by MoCo Student staff writer Yeabsira Moges of Wheaton High School