Thursday, October 15, 2009
October is breast cancer awareness month. In honor of that fact, HealthRock, a leading health edutainment company, is offering free downloads of a song that encourages women to get mammograms.
According to Mache Seibel, MD, who founded HealthRock, "My goal is to make health information memorable, enjoyable, and actionable." After all, he explained, "if you can sing about a medical procedure, you can talk about it. If you can talk about it, you can act on it."
Indeed, a
study by Dr. Blake Cady, of the Cambridge Hospital Breast Center and Harvard Medical School, showed that action is crucial when it comes to getting mammograms. In Dr. Cady's study of 6,997 breast cancer patients, to be presented later this week at an American Society of Clinical Oncology conference, 75% of the women who died of breast cancer had not had regular mammograms. Furthermore, the mortality rate for women who did not have regular mammograms was 56%. It was 4.7% for those who did.
Of course, no test is perfect. Mammograms may sometimes miss signs of cancer. Alternatively, they may lead to false positives. Yet Dr. Cady's study makes a strong case for women over 40 to get their annual mammogram.
Dr. Seibel hopes his mammogram song will lead women over the age of 40 to get this non-invasive, annual test. As Dr. Seibel says, "it's better to stay well than to get well." By giving out this free song, he is helping women to do just that.
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