Awareness: consciousness, conscious knowledge, or mindfulness.
There’s a lot of talk about breast cancer awareness. Campaigns to raise awareness; products to fund it; advertisements to disseminate it. But while mainstream awareness campaigns stimulate vague interest in breast cancer as a social cause, they do little to promote conscious knowledge or mindfulness when it comes to breast cancer.
Reasonable People Want To Know
How to tell myths from facts.
How to read the fine print of pink-ribboned products.
How conflicts of interest influence marketing and decision-making.
How to make decisions about charitable giving.
how much money is raised and spent in the name of breast cancer.
How diverse people experience the everyday realities of the disease.
Where to find evidence-based information and balanced health news.
How to evaluate what is needed to impact the breast cancer epidemic.
How to think about the big picture. What’s at stake, and for whom? What would it take to stop cancer before it starts? What kinds of actions would make a significant difference?
Reasonable people want to move BEYOND AWARENESS, which means returning to the idea that conscious knowledge — a basic definition of awareness — is more useful than sound bites, symbols, and superficiality.
To think more deeply about breast cancer awareness, we’ve compiled a set of key topics that address breast cancer not only as an individual experience or medical mystery, but as a complex social problem. We’ll highlight them throughout the month of October, along with additional insights into the ongoing battle against breast cancer.
