Dr. Love’s army of a million women, trying to stop breast cancer before it starts
Breast cancer specialist Susan Love, M.D., captured my attention at the Cochrane Collaboration meeting in Keystone, Colorado last month. She’s a physician with a business degree, a combination I’m usually wary of. But she has a talent for provocative thinking. And she’s the first to admit that like many surgeons she is action-oriented—“ready, fire, aim.”
Love established her reputation with her 2005 bestseller Breast Book. Now in its fifth edition, it guides women through the complex waters of breast disease. But treating cancer isn’t enough for Love—her aim is to “stop it.” Often we focus on early detection (like mammograms) or treatment (like new chemotherapy drugs), but not enough on prevention.
In pursuit of that goal, Love now concentrates her efforts on research, specifically recruiting a million women—some healthy, some with breast cancer—for breast cancer trials of all types. She began her crusade to build her Army of Women when she realized that, in most research studies, participants are recruited by health-care professionals and institutions whose focus is on clinical care, a very different cohort than those who would be naturals for multiple research studies oriented to large and diverse populations.
Women who join up decide which trial they’re interested in, and which they’re not. The Army is an equal opportunity recruiter—over 340,000 women from all over the U.S., of all races, and from 21 to 100—have signed up. No contribution or payment is required or expected.
Love funds these efforts by grants and contributions from industry, but upon our last look, appears to avoid folks that might have research conflicts of interest.
Talk about using technology, empowering consumers, and thinking out of the box. I, for one, applaud Love’s effort.
For more information on the Army of Women or to sign up, go to www.armyofwomen.org/.
—John Santa, M.D., M.P.H, director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center
Read my previous posts from the Cochrane Conference:
