“Cancer isn’t the star of my story.”
So reads a new billboard in New York City’s world-famous Times Square, a display given pride of place amid the light-and-sound-filled sliver of Manhattan. Below it is an equally large photo of media company MaleRoom founder and CEO Mindie Kaplan – topless and proudly showing off her double mastectomy scars.
It’s an intentionally eye-grabbing and empowering display – Kaplan, along with a second media company, OUTFRONT Media, and cancer support nonprofit Imerman Angels, are hoping to get a million mammograms scheduled this month. And she needs to get the word out.
Known officially as the Million Mammogram Challenge, the effort launched this week in tandem with the start of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Kaplan is clear about the goal: “The Million Mammogram Challenge will save lives and change narratives,” she said in a press release.
And mammograms can be real life-savers. According to the American College of Radiology, mammograms have reduced death rates from breast cancer by 40% since 1990. “Knowledge is power. And knowledge earlier is always better,” Jonny Imerman, testicular cancer survivor and co-founder of Imerman Angels, added in the release. “Empower yourself and others, and let’s work together to find and stop cancer before it takes too many of our lives.”
Indeed, breast cancer continues to impact – and end – lives by the tens and hundreds of thousands, just in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that, in 2021, over 272,000 new diagnoses were reported, and over 42,000 people lost their lives to it. And, experts add, rates of breast cancer are going up among young women, in particular.
Kaplan’s goal is to reverse that trend – hence the Times Square billboards screaming a message about the importance of awareness (along with the gospel choir that sang Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor” while Kaplan played tambourine at its unveiling). But that’s only the beginning – as she stated in an Instagram post on the project, “Now, let’s go book some mammograms!”
More information about the initiative, and how interested parties can schedule their mammograms, can be found on the campaign’s official site.
