Breast Cancer Awareness Month Social Media Toolkit 2020

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October 2020

Breast Cancer Awareness Month Social Media Toolkit

Breast Cancer Awareness Month Social Media Toolkit October 2020

CONTENTS

About This Toolkit...... 2 What is Breast Cancer Awareness Month? ...... 2 Social Media 101 ...... 2 Best Practices for Communicating About Breast Cancer ...... 2 Tips When Communicating About Breast Cancer ...... 3 Sample Tweets and Facebook Posts ...... 4 Sample LinkedIn Posts ...... 9 Additional Tools and Resources ...... 10 References...... 11

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This work was supported by Cooperative Agreement #NU58DP006461-02 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of CDC.

@GWCancer #CompCancer #BreastCancer #BCSM 1 ABOUT THIS TOOLKIT Don’t have the time or capacity to implement this toolkit? Don’t This toolkit is designed to help cancer control fret! You can still engage your stakeholders implement evidence-based practices when audience by retweeting communicating about breast cancer. messages from @GWCancer WHAT IS BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH? Breast Cancer Awareness Month is an annual observance held in the month of October. It is intended to raise awareness of breast cancer, the second most common cancer among U.S. women. 1 About 250,000 women and 2,300 men are diagnosed with breast cancer in the U.S. annually. 2

SOCIAL MEDIA 101 This toolkit offers recommended posts for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.3 For information about social media platforms, key terms, and strategies to promote health observances using social media, please review the social media guide available at http://bit.ly/GWCCSMTKs.

BEST PRACTICES FOR COMMUNICATING ABOUT BREAST CANCER When communicating about breast cancer, your audience may be newly diagnosed or long- term survivors, caregivers, health care providers, employers or others. Consider the information most useful to the relevant groups.

Certain groups experience higher rates of breast cancer incidence, mortality and health-related complications.4 Despite having the same incidence rates, African American women are almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer (which can be more aggressive and difficult to treat) and are more likely to die of breast cancer than white women.1,4 For Hispanic women, breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death as individuals in this group are often diagnosed at a later stage and generally present with larger tumors compared to white women.1,5 In terms of age disparities, about 11% of all new breast cancer cases in the U.S. are found in individuals younger than 45 years. 6 This puts them at a higher risk of recurrence and mortality after a cancer diagnosis. 7 While these disparities are complex and affected by a variety of different factors, communication-related issues can play a role. For example, compared to women of other races, African American women may mistrust the medical system8 and may be less likely to report feeling respected by a provider or having information explained in sufficient detail to understand. 9 A 2013 study reports that only 51% of providers discussed personal breast cancer risk with their patients during check-up visits.3,10 Patients who are uninsured or have public health insurance may also report lower quality patient-provider communication than privately insured patients.9

@GWCancer #CompCancer #BreastCancer #BCSM 2 TIPS WHEN COMMUNICATING ABOUT BREAST CANCER 1. Promote patient-provider discussions of family history and risk • Present personalized information about breast cancer risk,6 especially for men or young women at high risk due to family history.11,12 Delayed diagnosis may mean poorer outcomes.12 • Explicitly encourage patients to ask questions to facilitate shared decision-making.13 • Encourage providers to emphasize screening, risk-reduction and discuss family history, especially for those at higher risk. In a 2018 study of those at higher risk, 35% fewer black women than white women could identify at least one way to reduce their risk. 14 2. Share information about long-term care and survivorship • Promote specific resources that patients can request, like survivorship care plans, long-term care recommendations, or information tailored for young breast cancer survivors.11 • Highlight concrete actions, such as those that can minimize side effects and help patients make treatment decisions. 15 • Address sexual and reproductive health needs by sharing resources to manage long- term side effects. 16 • Encourage breast cancer survivors to focus on tobacco cessation, increased physical activity, good nutrition, healthy weight management, ongoing vaccinations, regular cancer screenings and pain management.17 • Promote awareness of the American Cancer Society/American Society of Clinical Oncology Breast Cancer Survivorship Care Guideline and the Cancer Survivorship E- Learning Series for Primary Care Providers among providers. 3. Remind providers about the importance of communication and its impact on patients’ quality of life • Remind providers that patients often report health professionals as their most important information source.18 • Emphasize to providers the importance of clear and comprehensive communication with patients. 19,20 • Prompt providers to spend more time talking to their patients and ask good questions, like, “‘Have you had any problems that we haven’t discussed yet?’ and ‘Are there any things that…[we] can do better?’”21 • Remind providers to avoid heteronormative assumptions about their breast cancer patients and explore a full range of surgical and post-surgical options. For example, forgoing breast reconstruction can be an affirming decision for some LGBTQ+ survivors. 22,23

@GWCancer #CompCancer #BreastCancer #BCSM 3 Tip: These correspond SAMPLE TWEETS AND FACEBOOK POSTS to the strategies above. Message Tweets Facebook Posts Category October is #BreastCancer Awareness Month! October is #BreastCancer Awareness Month. Did 1 DYK breast cancer is the second most you know that breast cancer is the second most common cancer for women in the U.S.? Read common cancer for U.S. women, following some quick facts about risk factors at types of skin cancers? Read the facts about your https://bit.ly/3hmFfup #BCSM #CompCancer risk at https://bit.ly/3hmFfup