New public health programmes focused on educating women about breast cancer. Early on, messages stressed the importance of breast self-examination, and the importance of notifying a physician about symptoms associated with breast cancer. Today these initiatives are more far reaching. Public education focuses on educating women about breast cancer, about risk factors for breast cancer, about the importance of early detection, and about breast cancer treatment options. Because breast cancer is among the leading health concerns for women, print and electronic media are highly likely to report results of new epidemiological studies, new technology for detection or treatment, or human interest stories describing triumph and tragedy.
Breast cancer is a leading concern of women, and therefore it has a prominent place in our media.
However, the abundance of messages about breast cancer has led to concerns that there have been unintended consequences from the attempts to educate women - these include confusion about breast cancer risk, and confusion about the association between individual circumstances and behaviours associated with breast cancer risk. Evidence shows that some women overestimate their risk, while others underestimate their risk. While psychosocial needs associated with breast cancer are usually focused on patients and survivors, new attention has focused on the needs of women at risk for this disease. Relative and absolute risk Relative and absolute risk are two different expressions of the probability that a woman will be diagnosed with breast cancer. Relative risk is a measure of risk based on the occurrence of disease among women with a particular characteristic, i.e. a risk factor, compared to those without the characteristic.