I've mentioned before that one of my closest friends was diagnosed with breast cancer a couple of years ago. My grandmother, cousin, and ex-mother-in-law have all suffered from it. There are so many good causes that need support, but breast cancer research has always been on the top of my list. Last fall, a friend e-mailed me a link to a program called Army Of Women. It's a group established to research breast cancer not just on high risk women, but on women who are also healthy.
An excerpt from the site:
- To recruit one million healthy women of every age and ethnicity, including breast cancer survivors and women at high-risk for the disease, to partner with breast cancer researchers and directly participate in the research that will eradicate breast cancer once and for all.
- To challenge the scientific community to expand its current focus to include breast cancer prevention research conducted on healthy women
It's such a simple program that I can't believe more people haven't signed up for it. You register your e-mail address with them (along with age, ethnicity, and location) and they send you an e-mail to see if you fit the research topic that they're currently working on. For example, I just received an e-mail that stated a new study on post-menopausal overweight women was being conducted at UCLA (since that's semi-close to me). It gave a general spectrum of the study, as well as what a participant would be expected to do (in this case, visit UCLA 3 times a week for aerobic exercise and weight training, eat meals prepared by the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition, as well as blood tests, lung tests, breast fluid tests, and body measurements). Since I am not post menopausal, I do not qualify. So I simply clicked the No Thanks button, and they send a response e-mail thanking me for my time. That's it. So far I've been offered 6 studies, but sadly have not qualified for any of them.
It's such a simple thing to sign up, and you may be able to help with breast cancer research simply by filling out a form. It costs you nothing but a moment of your time. I urge you to sign up, and then send a link to your mom, daughter, aunt, grandmother, sister or friend and have them sign up too. Click the link below to get to the sign up page, or click the badge on the top right column of my page.
If you want further information on the program, please feel free to ask me!