October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  

The goal of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month has been to promote mammography as the most effective weapon in the fight against breast cancer.

Founded in October of 1985, Breast Cancer Awareness Month began as Breast Cancer Awareness Week. This observation was created through a partnership between the American Cancer Society and the pharmaceutical division of Imperial Chemical Industries (now part of AstraZeneca, producer of several anti-breast cancer drugs).

In 1993 Evelyn Lauder, Senior Corporate Vice President of the Estée Lauder Companies, founded the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and established the pink ribbon as its symbol, though this was not the first time the ribbon was used to symbolize breast cancer: a 68-year-old California woman named Charlotte Haley, whose sister, daughter, and granddaughter had breast cancer, had distributed peach-color ribbons to call attention to what she perceived as inadequate funding for research. In the fall of 1991, the Susan G. Komen Foundation had handed out pink ribbons to participants in its New York City race for breast cancer survivors.

For more information and a listing of events. Please visit the following links:

• Find a low-cost screening
• Information about Self Exams
• The Susan G. Komen Foundation (Columbus)
• National Breast Cancer Foundation