October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and an opportunity for people to remind ourselves and others of the importance of routine screening for early detection.
Breast cancer is a disease that affects men and women. It’s estimated that every 14 seconds, someone around the world is diagnosed with the affliction. This year in the United States, an estimated 310,720 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer making it the most common cancer in American women.
What’s become a big part of every community’s breast cancer awareness campaign is visual reminders using the color pink. Campaigns share pink ribbons, pink bracelets, pink shirts, and so on, in the month-long effort to catch the disease early so that it can be treated.
Mid-West Family Southwest Michigan, the owner of Moody on the Market, is leading a campaign this month called Real Men Wear Pink (RMWP). The annual campaign is a multimedia awareness drive encouraging people to wear pink on Fridays as a visual reminder for breast cancer screening.
New to the campaign this year is the team from Centsible Heating & Air Conditioning, based in Coloma. Dan Crist is the owner of Centsible and besides being part of the RMWP campaign, he’s taking awareness a step further and outfitting his entire crew in pink shirts during the month of October.
“We haven’t been part of this campaign before, so we wanted to get involved. Every year we do several different things in the community and this year we wanted to join this and see if we could help,” said Crist.
Crist has a team of 10 people with a service territory spanning New Buffalo to South Haven, so he bought the entire staff pink shirts and hats so they could help raise awareness all across Southwest Michigan. Now, every Friday, the service personnel are wearing pink to do their part.
“Breast cancer has become more and more mainstream. People are more aware of it than ever before. I know quite a few people that have had it — some good friends of mine. Nobody in my family, thank God, but some good friends have gone through a pretty horrible time and have survived. Some haven’t.”
The team at Centsible takes part in other community causes. In February, they spontaneously decided to show appreciation to first responders by treating them to coffee on Valentine’s Day. They’ve also teamed up with SERVPRO of Berrien County and local fire departments to donate smoke detectors to communities.
Crist said for breast cancer awareness, the cause hits closer to home.
“I used to own a restaurant in the 90s. One of the women that worked for me, she was in the kitchen, 27-years old, and she died from breast cancer. She had four kids, and it was really heartbreaking, you know, the family going through that, and that was just horrible,” said Crist.
The message Crist hopes to share is simple.
“You really need to get out there and get checked. And now they’re pushing for men to do it, too.”
For more information on how your business can get involved in the Real Men Wear Pink campaign, contact Terry Glaser at Mid-West Family Southwest Michigan at (269) 925-1111 or email at tglaser@midwestfamilyswmi.com.
