By Dani and Julia
As October is beginning, you may have noticed more pink popping up everywhere. Maybe your school had a pink out day or maybe you saw more pink products in stores. October is celebrated as Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It’s an annual recognition to help spread awareness of the disease. You might be wondering why pink? The first breast cancer survivor program distributed pink ribbons to spread awareness of this disease and promote funding for the research of it. After that, the popularity of the pink ribbon grew especially when it started to be included within famous magazines. This led to pink ribbons being the symbol for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Breast Cancer Awareness Month is recognized in many countries across the world every October. Many citizens want to spread the awareness for others to seek early detection and treatment of this common disease. Breast Cancer Awareness Month is also used to help raise money for research. According to the American Cancer Society, the most common cancer in women other than skin cancer is breast cancer. The number of survivors has been increasing over the years as medicine progresses. There are many resources for women to get checked all over the world. There are Mammograms, which is a machine designed to look between breast tissue. You can also go get an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), which is a machine that uses a magnet and radio waves to see inside your breast.
While the month of October this year has been very busy with COVID-19 and the presidential election, you should not forget about Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Here are some ways you can donate/get involved: donate to an organization, sign a petition, and much more. Petitions that you can sign are usually found online and are about the need for increasing research for breast cancer, so that the survival rates can go up. You can donate to charities that work with breast cancer or breast cancer survivors. Finally you can volunteer for different charities, however this may not be as readily available with COVID-19.