A new campus organization looks to bring breast cancer awareness

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but a new group on campus wants to raise awareness year-round.

The newly founded Troy University Breast Cancer Awareness Society wants to educate people around campus about what causes breast cancer and healthy steps they can take to try to prevent it.

“October is always going to be Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and it's really important through October that we do recognize Breast Cancer Awareness Month, because it is only recognized one month,” said Troy University Breast Cancer Awareness Society Founder and President Katherine Harrison, a senior elementary education major from Keystone Heights, Florida. “We wanted to bring awareness to it for the whole year, just because it is so much more than October.

“People face it for most of their lives, and they battle for years. It's so much more than just wearing a ribbon or just wearing pink.

“It's about bringing focus to the actual disease, what causes it and how you can prevent it.”

Harrison founded the group because of her family's history with breast cancer.

“Every woman in my family except for my aunt has had it,” Harrison said. “My great grandma passed away from breast cancer, and my nana is a two-time breast cancer survivor.

“She and my mom recently had it this past September. Them going through it at the same time really drove me to make Troy Breast Cancer Awareness Society to bring awareness to women and men on Troy's campus, because it is something that women and men face every single day for a long period of their lives.”

While it is less likely, men can also be diagnosed with breast cancer.

According to the American Cancer Society, in men, the lifetime risk for getting breast cancer around one in every 755, with fewer than one percent of breast cancer diagnoses occuring in men.

For one member of the organization, he did not know men could have breast cancer until his grandfather was diagnosed with the cancer.

He said he wants to bring attention to men like him who did not know they could be affected by the disease.

“I think it affects everybody, women specifically, but I also want to bring awareness because even though it's rare for men to get breast cancer, it still happens,” said Troy University’s Breast Cancer Awareness Society Vice President Myles Wilson, a freshman risk management and insurance major from Huntsville, Alabama. “I think breast cancer is one of the big cancers out there that affects people so much around the world, and I honestly think it's something that needs to be brought to attention.”

The group hopes that by teaching students in college the dangers of breast cancer, it will be something they can carry into their post-grad world..

“If this is something that we can really drill into the students’ heads here in college, that's something that they'll carry with them for the rest of their lives, no matter where they go,” said Sam Lawson, an on-campus consultant for the group who is a junior elementary education major from Andalusia, Alabama. “We'll ultimately be bringing awareness to the entire world by doing this on campus.”

The group’s next event is Pink in Motion, a one-mile walk around campus at the JRL quad Thursday afternoon at five.

To stay up to date with the group’s events or for more information about joining the group, students are encouraged to follow their Instagram page at @trojansinpink.