PHASE ONE
The goal of the Live Pink Breast Health Resource is to educate all teen girls in Nova Scotia with breast health information they can use for their entire lifetime. The material is available in both English and French. Funding was provided by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
This project is unique for Nova Scotia, and the second such endeavour in Canada. The Network consulted with Cancer Care Manitoba and learned much from their “Be Pink – Adolescent Breast Health Resource” that was developed and successfully implemented for high school and community health educators in Manitoba. With their permission many slides, images, and messages were borrowed from the Be Pink – Adolescent Breast Health Resource.
Nine focus groups were conducted throughout Nova Scotia by Corporate Research Associates, where data was collected from urban, rural, French, Black, Lesbian, Acadian and francophone, Mi’kmaq, and Immigrant teen girls. The report, Youth Breast Health Qualitative Research Study, was completed in October 2009 and is available upon request.
Advisory Committee partners were: Breast Cancer Network Nova Scotia district representatives, the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation-Atlantic Region, Canadian Cancer Society-Nova Scotia Division, the IWK Health Centre, an Acadian representative, Donna Smith, Cancer Care Nova Scotia, the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq, the Union of Nova Scotia Indians, Pride Health, and the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women.
The target age range of 16 to 18 has been selected to take advantage of the teen girls’ formative years in terms of body development and developing healthy lifestyles early. Eighty percent of women who receive a diagnosis of breast cancer have no family history of the disease. Breast Screening in Nova Scotia begins at the age of 40. For younger women, their only recourse is breast awareness and examination by a family physician. Women who do not have a family history of breast cancer are usually not thinking about breast health and breast cancer, and therefore, most do not practice breast awareness or have annual examinations. Nor are they thinking that early lifestyle habits correlate with a higher risk of disease later in life.
Creative design and marketing for Phase One was conducted by Bristol Communications.
To download the pdfs of the presentation from Phase One, click the links below: