Seeking Volunteers, Advocates, and Employees!

Get Involved and Make a Difference!

We are in the process of getting our new official web site up live in 2 weeks! There are many features and important information that we are looking forward to sharing.

We are interested in hearing from anyone who wants to volunteer, get involved and/or seeking employment.

Please consider volunteering your time. We need help managing office issues, assisting in projects, event planning, fundraising, marketing, social media, action campaigns, and with web site content. There are also small projects that you can help with. Just let us know what you are interested in doing, your time constraints and together we will make it happen.

We also have openings for volunteers and/or scholarships who advocates who want to attend the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, YSC, AACR, NBCC, ASCO, Breast Cancer Symposiums, Metastatic Conferences, as well as other lectures and meetings where we will help pay based on your needs and have you represent A4BC. You can write about your experience at these great meetings. Feel free to suggest one that you are interested in and contact us!

We love our volunteers and staff. Tell us a little about yourself and let us know your interests. For more information contact us at: info@a4bc.org.

You will hear back from us right away. You can also phone us at: 310-923-2339. For more information contact us at: info@a4bc.org.

Alarming breast cancer rates among troops

If you think breast cancer is just something for your grandmother, mom and aunts to worry about, think again. Not only is breast cancer striking relatively young military women at alarming rates, but male service members, veterans and their dependents are at risk, as well.

With their younger and generally healthier population, those in the military tend to have a lower risk for most cancers than civilians, including significantly lower colorectal, lung and cervical cancer rates in certain groups.

GET INVOLVED

As local installations roll out events in conjunction with National Breast Cancer Awareness Month — like the fun runs and walks this week at Fort Polk, La., and Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., and coming up Oct. 19 at Camp Lejeune, N.C. — we want to try an experiment. We’ve set up the MilTimes Boot Breast Cancer Facebook page in hopes of establishing a forum where military people affected by breast cancer can network, tell stories and get the word out about events — like the PCB Navy Diver Wives team raising money for Making Strides Against Breast Cancer on Oct. 27 in Panama City, Fla.

But breast cancer is a different story.

“Military people in general, and in some cases very specifically, are at a significantly greater risk for contracting breast cancer,” says Dr. Richard Clapp, a top cancer expert at Boston University. Clapp, who works for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on military breast cancer issues, says life in the military can mean exposure to a witch’s brew of risk factors directly linked to greater chances of getting breast cancer.

Indeed, in a 2009 study, doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center found that breast cancer rates among military women are “significantly higher” — that military women are 20 percent to 40 percent more likely to get the disease than other women in the same age groups.

Researchers point to a higher use of oral contraception — also linked to breast cancer — among military women as a possible culprit.

“Military women are also more likely to be engaged in industrial jobs than females in the general population and hence potentially more likely to be exposed to chemicals that may be related to breast cancer,” researchers wrote in the study.

By Jon R. Anderson – Army Times Staff writer

Posted : Monday Oct 1, 2012 11:08:48 EDT