Editorial
Front Page - Friday, October 9, 2009
UTC Pink Symposium to educate about early detection
Samara Litvack
When Carol Oglesby was asked to serve on the Komen Foundation board of directors earlier this year, she didn’t think twice about it. She jumped headfirst into her role and decided to learn all she could about breast cancer.
“There are lots of things involved with it but one of the things that really struck me is that all women are at the same risk,” she says. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re Caucasian, African American, Native American, you’re all at the same risk.”
She also learned, however, that African American women had a 10 percent higher likelihood of dying from breast cancer than Caucasian women. While she couldn’t track down statistics on exactly why that is, she drew the conclusion that education involving mammograms and breast self-examinations was less available to women in this category.
With that in mind, Oglesby began collecting data and performed a study on the University of Tennessee Chattanooga campus, where she works as coordinator of student civic engagement and health promotion. Her one goal was to see how many females on campus did breast self-examinations, and what she found astounded her.
“Less than half the women here practice that on a regular basis,” she says. “I checked around with them and asked and they thought that because of their age, that they were not susceptible to breast cancer.”
Oglesby then set out to find females who had been stricken with breast cancer in their early 20s, most of whom had received double mastectomies and many of whom had been rendered menopausal due to chemotherapy. After speaking with these women, she learned they had also disregarded instruction to conduct breast self-exams before they were diagnosed, and had they detected the disease sooner, they might not have suffered so greatly.
From that point on, Oglesby felt an obligation to spread the word to young people that regardless of age, lifestyle or family history, everyone is at great risk for breast cancer.
“My point is to create awareness,” says Oglesby, and her first personal effort to spread the word, the UTC Pink Symposium, will take place on campus on Thursday, October 15.
The event will begin with an attempt to break the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest pink ribbon ever constructed as participants gather on Chamberlain Field. Free t-shirts (pink for ladies, gray for gentlemen) will be given to the first 2,000 participants, allowing the intended visual effect to be created.
“The women will be in the center and the men, with the gray shirts, will outline the ribbon and kind of surround the women that they love,” says Oglesby.
“Men have to do this for the women they love. This is going to affect their spouse, their mother, their grandmother, their daughters, a friend. At some point in their life, they’re going to have to step up and be the strength for a woman that is suffering from this disease and the men on campus here know that.”
Following the construction of the human ribbon will be a series of lectures that cater to various groups expected to be in attendance, from students to breast cancer survivors to the general public interested in learning more about the disease.
“Since we are a university, we certainly want our students to be there,” says Oglesby. “We want our students to realize that they do have to take care of this and they do have to have breast self examinations. It’s important. We want to expose them to women who have suffered from this disease as early as their age.”
Nursing staff will also be on hand to teach young women how to do breast self-exams. This will take place during the latter portion of the Pink Symposium in the Multicultural Center.
The event, which will take place from 4 to 10 p.m., is an effort to target young women between the ages of 15 and 24 years old, but the general public is encouraged to attend. In fact, the more community support UTC receives, the better.
And, despite common misconception that the two organizations compete, The Komen Foundation and the Breast Cancer Network of Strength are both stepping forward to support UTC’s premier event, which is aimed at educating students and the surrounding community.
“The Komen Foundation’s come forward with this; they gave us money,” says Oglesby. “They are donating the shower cards for the students here on campus, which is very expensive… The Breast Cancer Network of Strength, they are providing videos.
“They certainly do work together. They work together with different aspects of breast cancer, whether it’s the survivors, the families, the funding for the research, but they are definitely a unit that works together. Both of them have come forward and given all they’ve got.”
In addition to these two widely recognized supporters of breast cancer education, sponsors of the Pink Symposium include the UTC Wellness Committee, UTC Women’s Action Council and UTC Speakers and Special Events.
Guest speakers will include Sarah Bowen, chairperson of the Komen for the Cure Foundation; Lynda Levan, executive director of Breast Cancer Network of Strength; and Condra Nelson, breast cancer survivor, diagnosed at the age of 19.
Professionals and faculty from UTC who will lead educational seminars on various aspects of prevention diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer include Dr. June Hanks and Dr. Barry Dale from the Department of Physical Therapy; Dr. Holly Dieken and Dr. Jamie Harvey from the Department of Health and Human Performance; Dr. Lisa Muirhead, UTC School of Nursing; and Ms. June Matthews, coordinating nurse at the UTC Health Center.
Due to the educational content of the UTC Pink Symposium, participants must be 15 years of age or older. Continuing education units are also available for professionals, and CEU certificates are available for a fee of $10.
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