Updating our health information - breast cancer in younger women

What’s the project about?

At Breast Cancer Now, we update all our health information every 2-3 years. For the most recent update of this information, we wanted to get some insight from women who were diagnosed with breast cancer under the age of 45 what to include and what topics mattered most to them.

How did Voices get involved?

Around 10 Voices members filled in an initial survey to tell us about the topics they felt were most important to younger women. Two of those respondents took part in a longer focus interview, telling us more about their story and what they felt the information needed to cover.

Five more of those respondents provided some quotes for us to use in the booklet alongside their names, detailing their experiences with particular topics, like talking to their children about breast cancer, returning to work and conversations about fertility.

What’s happened so far?

We did a thorough update of all our information for younger women, expanding or adding the topics that the survey told us were most important.

These included coping with menopausal symptoms, self-employment and dealing with relationships with friends and family.

We also included the real-life quotes from the survey respondents in the booklet.

What are the next steps?

The new booklet has now gone to print and can be ordered online via our website. And we’ve updated our webpage for younger women.

We’ll monitor feedback on the updated information to see what younger women and the healthcare professionals who look after them think about the updates.

We hope that by talking to people with lived experience and including their real-life stories in the updated information, other younger women reading through it will feel seen, heard, supported and less alone in their experiences.

A big thank you to all the Voice contributors who gave their time to help us really understand what’s important to younger women with breast cancer.