‘Breast awareness’ is a term that’s used a lot, especially in October
 |
| 2017 McGrath Breast Health Index |
Many women consider themselves breast
aware without giving much thought to what that means.
One of Jane McGrath’s
objectives was to increase breast awareness in Australia especially in young
women.
This is the second year of the McGrath Breast Health Index – a measure of what they are calling ‘breastpertise’.
For the second year running the results
reveal a disconnect between belief and reality when it comes to the nation’s
breast health.
Almost three quarters (73%) of Australian women believe they are
breast aware, yet fewer than one in five (16%) fulfil the four criteria to be
classified by The McGrath Foundation, a ‘breastpert’.
The importance of Mother-Daughter Conversations
As confirmed in the 2017 research, women who have had a conversation with
their mother about both breast awareness and puberty are significantly more
likely to meet the index's ‘Awareness’, ‘Knowledge’ and ‘Behaviour’ criteria. (However in 2017 additional questions about conversations specifically on puberty were added).
The 2016 results indicated that although
around half of all women believed that mothers were best placed to first raise
breast health awareness, only a quarter had had any such conversation and only
12% had had their first conversation about breast awareness with their mother.
- Jane McGrath was only 31 when diagnosed with breast cancer
- Breast cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer in women aged 25 to 49
- Every day, across Australia and New Zealand, 56 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer
- One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer by the age of 85
- There are 193,730 people in Australia who have been diagnosed with breast cancer in the past 31 years
