In this assignment I am going to evaluate the methods and strategies used for preventing each disease, Breast Cancer and Chlamydia, and suggesting how prevention, support and treatment might be improved.
Breast Cancer
Prevention Strategies for Breast Cancer
A prevention strategy for Breast Cancer could be self-examination. A campaign that supports this strategy is TLC ‘Touch, Look, Check’; Touch Look Check (or TLC) is Breakthrough Breast Cancer’s breast awareness message and encourages women to Touch, Look and Check their breast’s regularly. This strategy is TOUCH your breasts- can you feel anything unusual? LOOK for changes-is there any change in shape or texture? And CHECK anything unusual with your doctor.1 It is stated on the Breakthrough Breast Cancer website that ‘more women than ever before are surviving breast cancer thanks to better awareness, treatments and screening’2 and this shows that campaigns and awareness strategies like TLC are succeeding in helping women to survive Breast Cancer. This strategy applies to all ages as it says ‘Whatever your age, it’s good to get into the habit of checking. The risk of breast cancer increases with age, so if you are over 50, you’ll get an invitation for free breast screening every three years up to the age of 70 and remember if you’re over 70 you are still entitled to free breast screening – just ask your local screening service or doctor.’3 The good thing about this strategy is that you don’t need any special training or practise, it is simply checking for lumps in your breasts and seeking professional advice so this will then mean that women may not be afraid of checking as it can be in the comfort of their own home and it will prevent embarrassment of allowing someone else e.g. a doctor to do it for you. It’s main aim to get women into the habit of regularly checking their breasts and to be familiar with how their breasts look and feel normally so they will then be able to notice anything unusual and remembering to check the whole breast area, including your upper chest and armpits. Another campaign that supports self-examination would be ‘Know Your Lemons’ and this is a campaign which is making you check your breasts so you know your breasts so you can notice if anything is different or changed i.e. a lump. Its making you think of your breasts as being built-up in three layers and therefore feeling them with light, medium and deep pressure to explore each layer. It provides strategies in checking them such as ‘move in a circular, up-and-down or outward-to-inward direction, whichever you prefer.’4 It states that it also helps to feel your breasts in different positions for example lying down with one arm behind your head, sitting up and arching forward or standing up in the shower and claims each way changes the landscape a little to help you investigate from a different angle. Therefore this campaign’s general aim is to raise awareness of checking your breasts and ‘knowing’ them and using the lemon as symbol for a breast links in well with a quote which says ‘keep in mind a cancerous lump is often hard and immovable like a lemon seed.’5 So this is overall raising awareness of what to look out for and checking on a regular basis to notice unusual lumps or problems but also within the comfort of your own home and on your own if you’d prefer much like the TLC campaign so you wouldn’t have to be embarrassed which can be a major factor for why women wouldn’t check.
Another prevention strategy for Breast Cancer could be testing for the BRCA gene. BRCA1 and BRCA2 are human genes that belong to a class of genes known as tumour suppressors and it is stated that a mutation of these genes has been linked to hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. On the National Cancer Institute website it is stated that ‘a woman's risk of developing breast and/or ovarian cancer is greatly increased if she inherits a harmful BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation.’6 This is therefore a
