Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month on November, 2024: Breast cancer awareness month?

November, 2024 is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month 2024. American Cancer Society® Join The Fight and Donate to Help Fund a Cure for Pancreatic Cancer.

Different governments and organisations have declared different months as AIDS Awareness Month. The most frequent choice is December, as World AIDS Day is on December 1st each year.

Lung Cancer Awareness Month, and Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month are both November. Yes, they share a month - but there are only 12 months in any given year. Take a look at this Cancer Awareness Month calender :

You'll see that, for example, breast cancer shares its awareness month with liver cancer.

But there's a reason that breast cancer has a higher profile than other cancers, and Tarkarri has explained it - sheer hard work.

People have limited time for campaigns; those who campaign around illnesses are usually concerned with the illness that's affected them or their family. I know a couple who have a child with a very rare and life-threatening condition. Much of their time is now taken up with campaigning around this condition - fund raising, agitating for more funding for research, more education, more awareness etc.

They're doing what what the women who started the breast cancer awareness campaign did. Breast cancer awareness campaigns and Awareness Month started as a campaign by ordinary women, most of whom had breast cancer or had lost someone to it, to raise awareness so that people knew the symptoms, examined themselves regularly, attended their routine mammograms etc. It caught the public imagination and enthusiastic participation and hard work by women made it grow into something nationally, then internationally, recognised.

And it's as a result of the hard work by those women that breast cancer is no longer the automatic death sentence it once was (but don't lose sight of the fact that in the US an average of 112 women die from breast cancer every day; in the UK.that average is 33 a day - I don't have statistics for other countries).

There is nothing to stop anyone working as hard as they did to raise awareness and funds for other cancers or other conditions

Is anyone else upset that breast cancer is the only publicized awareness month?

No, I don't agree.

Breast cancer awareness and Breast Cancer Awareness Month are not high profile because of celebrity deaths, but for a much simpler reason - sheer hard work.

Breast cancer awareness campaigns and BC Awareness Month started as a campaign by ordinary women, many of them with cancer, to raise awareness so that people knew the symptoms, examined themselves regularly, attended their routine mammograms etc. Enthusiastic participation and hard work by women made it grow into something nationally, then internationally, recognised (and then big business cashed in).

I agree that awareness needs to be raised about other cancers too.and while I hate 'competitive illness' I can see why there is resentment about an imbalance in awareness raising and fund raising. I too have had family members suffer from other cancers - lung, testicular, stomach and cervical cancers and leukaemia, all but one of them dying of their cancers.

There are, as you point out, other cancer awareness months, weeks, ribbons etc; but the fact is none has had the sheer hard work put into it that breast cancer awareness has.

Now, I've had breast cancer and I personally very much dislike BC Awareness Month - or Pink October as the more cynical of us call it.

Support for those with a deadly disease that kills on average 33 women a day in the UK and 112 a day in the US (the only stats I have, I'm not being ethnocentric) has been turned into a marketing opportunity by big business, with around 1% of the cost of specially made pink stuff going to breast cancer charities, the rest into the retailers’ pockets.

The pink fluffy stuff infuriates me, and I'm not at all 'tickled pink' by Asda's (Walmart's) trivialisation of an illness that may yet kill me. October magazines carry stories from cheerful survivors who claim to have the all-clear (there is no all-clear with breast cancer), and often say bc has changed their lives for the better - very different from anybody I know who's had breast cancer.

And it has negative consequences for breast cancer patients too - I believe that the whole thing is counter-productive, that the marketing and fund-raising hype surrounding breast cancer, by trivialising a deadly disease, is leading people to believe, wrongly, that breast cancer is 1) not very serious, certainly not as serious as many other cancers (many women with breast cancer have been told - by people who don't have it - that it's a 'good' cancer to get) and 2) easily curable.

I've even heard it said that it's a ‘fashionable’ or 'sexy' cancer - my sexy prosthesis and sexy scarred, one-breasted body are evidence that it's no such thing.

In all the pink trivia, it's easy for people to lose sight of the fact that breast cancer is a devastating illness with disfiguring surgery, grueling treatments and so far no cure.

I don't wear a pink ribbon and as someone in remission from breast cancer I support the Think Before You Pink and Pink Stinks! campaigns, both started by women with breast cancer

BUT it does annoy me a little when people complain about the attention breast cancer receives in comparison to other cancers. The solution is not less attention for breast cancer, but more attention for other cancers - and there is nothing to stop any group of people starting a campaign along the lines of the one started ny those women who started all the breast cancer awareness. They'd have to be as dedicated and prepared to work as hard though.

Which months are cancer awareness months?

Cancer Awareness Months

January

Cervical Health Awareness Month

February

National Cancer Prevention Month

..

March

National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, Lymphedema "D" Day (March 6)

..

April

Cancer Control Month, Cancer Fatigue Awareness Day, Testicular Cancer Awareness Week, National Young Adult Cancer Awareness Week, National Minority Cancer Awareness Week, National Oral, Head & Neck Cancer Awareness Week, Oncology Nurses Day

May

Melanoma/Skin Cancer Detection and Prevention Month, Melanoma Monday, Oncology Nurses Month, Brain Tumor Action Week, Blood Cancer Advocacy Day.

June

National Cancer Survivors Day, Sarcoma Awareness Week

September

Childhood Cancer Awareness, Gynecologic Cancer Awareness, Leukemia and Lymphoma Awareness, Ovarian Cancer Awareness, Prostate Cancer Awareness, Thyroid Cancer Awareness Week

October

Breast Cancer Awareness, National Mammography Day

November

Lung Cancer Awareness, Lung Cancer Awareness Week, Pancreatic Cancer Awareness, Family Caregivers Month, National Hospice Month, National Marrow Awareness Month