"When any of you all had mammograms, were you asked about bf history?"

I have recently applied for and received a grant from the Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Foundation to provide a program of screenng, education, clinical exams, and mammograms to at least 125 at risk, uninsured, underinsured women in our county. We added the question about did you Bf and how long to our history form. It will be interesting to see the data.We included the usual questions about risk factors also.
I have discussed this risk factor before at regional American Cancer Society meetings and found they usually have not heard of any research linking breastfeeding and breast cancer. The researcher in Sweden who is working on the breast milk components which causes cell apoptosis received an ACS grant and I believe is the first researcher to be awarded an ACS grant outside the US.
As part of my job at the health department, I teach adult health classes to the women who are enrolling in the Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening Program.  It is interesting that in some of the educational literature, not breastfeeding is listed as a risk factor and in other materials it is not mentioned. I personally think this should be on billboards across America. If we can do anything to help reduce the risk of getting this disease for younger women, we should be doing those measures. I tell people, just think, we are talking about reducing the risk of developing the disease--not detecting it early after you already have it. That should be a message from everyone from the American Public Health Association to all involved in Health education and cancer prevention.

Barbara Whitehead, IBCLC (climbing down from my soapbox!)
Eastern NC

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