Breast Cancer Prevention (Mar '23)

The statistics around breast cancer are; 1 in 8 women in the US will develop breast cancer in her lifetime; it is the second most common cancer among women; and over 30% of cancers in women are breast cancer. And while family history is important, over 85% of women do not have a significant family history. So it’s very common but what can you do? Quite a bit beyond what you’re likely doing!

It turns out that in the past decade, we’ve learned a lot about how to assess specific risks and proactively do things to bring down those risks. And while mammograms are important in the detection of already-formed cancer, there is much more that can be done to prevent breast cancer from developing. We will take a deep dive into what are the risk factors, both genetic (it’s a lot more than assessing for the BRCA gene) and environmental (it’s also a lot more than just eating your vegetables). We hope you’ll leave this class understanding better what causes breast cancer, how you can evaluate your risks, and what you can do about them.