Cincinnatian leading fight for advanced breast cancer screening
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Not sure my headline is exactly correct, but I wasn't quite sure how to describe it.
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Paywall
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Michele Young wants to be known as the Joe Burrow of breast cancer legislation.
Some would say she’s already in Hall of Fame territory – a combination of Tom Brady’s career stats and Peyton Manning’s charm.
The Cincinnati attorney was one of the driving forces behind legislation that went into effect in Ohio last month. House Bill 371 sailed through Ohio’s contentious Legislature, passing nearly unanimously (only one lawmaker voted no in each chamber) and was signed into law by Gov. Mike DeWine in June. Reps. Jean Schmidt, R-Loveland, and Sedrick Denson, D-Cincinnati, co-sponsored the bill. It requires patient notification by letter when a mammogram indicates dense breast tissue. It also requires insurance companies to cover advanced forms of breast cancer screening.
Michele Young is in complete remission now after being diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer in 2018. The driving force behind new screening laws in Ohio now has her sights set on national reform – and finding a cure.
Young’s motivation is easy to understand. She’s lucky to be alive.“I was stage 4,” Young said on The Enquirer’s “That’s So Cincinnati” podcast. “I was told that all bets were off. The operation was canceled, and my internist told me to go through my bucket list.”
Young learned that her cancer, diagnosed in 2018, was likely present six years earlier but missed by routine mammograms because she has dense breast tissue. Had the cancer been caught early, her doctor said she would have a 99 percent chance of complete remission.
Now, her odds of survival were 1 in 100.
A breast cancer survivor's story:A breast cancer survivor's story: Why Ohio House Bill 371 is desperately needed
40 percent of women have dense breast tissue
According to the National Cancer Institute, 40 percent of women have dense breast tissue, which in addition to making mammograms hard to read, increases the risk of cancer.Young had no idea she was in that category.
“I said (to my doctor), ‘How'd this happen?’ She said, ‘Well, you have dense breast, it happens all the time.’ And I said, ‘Well, why do we let it happen?’ She goes, ‘It's a wrong and it's an evil.’ ”
So Young went to work, first fighting her cancer by undergoing aggressive treatment. Her condition improved enough that surgery was rescheduled, and today she’s in remission.
Young then set her sights on changing the law, joining what she calls a “dream team,” which included Dr. Ann Brown, a breast radiologist at UC Health, to push House Bill 371 through the legislature.
'There is not a (concerted effort) towards breast cancer'
With Ohio’s new screening law in effect, Young is now lending her expertise to pass similar legislation on the federal level. Her efforts caught the attention of former Today co-host and CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric, who interviewed Young for an episode of her “Next Question” podcast. Couric was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year.But what drives Young the most is finding a cure, specifically a set of vaccines, which she says is a possibility with what was learned by scientists who developed the COVID-19 vaccine. The hurdle is funding.
“The federal government spends trillions, but there is not a (concerted effort) towards breast cancer … it's disorganized, it's driven by profits and is not driven by the science,” she said.
And because of the skill and expertise of doctors and researchers she met during her own fight with breast cancer, Young believes the cure could be found in Ohio – specifically Cincinnati. After all, Cincinnati is where the polio vaccine was discovered.
“We could change everything … starting right here.”
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“It requires patient notification by letter when a mammogram indicates dense breast tissue. It also requires insurance companies to cover advanced forms of breast cancer screening.”
I can only laugh or cry. I think we have been putting breast density on mammogram reports for maybe like twenty years already. And almost everyone with dense breasts get additional screening like sonograms and sometimes MRIs. It’s just so basic.
America your health system sucks
