As HMEB reported last week, The Breast Cancer Patient Equity Act debuted in the House and Senate, and now a special public awareness and advocacy campaign is launching a special March 8 International Women’s Day advocacy portion to support the legislation.
The Act would ensure coverage for custom post-mastectomy breast prostheses to the more than 144,000 women who undergo mastectomies annually. Currently, Medicare does not cover those items.
To organize advocacy supporting the Act, Essentially Women and the People for Quality Care partnered to launch the Let Her Decide (#LetHerDecide) campaign. That campaign is marketing International Women’s Day with special advocacy messages that patients, caregivers, providers and other stakeholders can send to lawmakers.
“The campaign message for International Women’s Day this year is ‘Balance for Better,’ which we think ties in very nicely to the whole message of Let Her Decide,” said Nikki Jensen, vice president of Essentially Women. “International Women’s Day celebrates the achievements of women around the world in the workplace, in government, in media and healthcare, and looking for balance and equality. Therefore we have the Breast Cancer Patient Equity Act, which is all about letting women have all the options available to them that are most appropriate after mastectomy.”
All the relevant information is available at the www.LetHerDecide.org web page. When visitors to the site click “take action” and enter their zip code, the page will bring up their members of Congress, and they will be given the option to send an email to their lawmakers. However, in this case the body of the email will be different for International Women’s day.
“That way when it hits the inboxes in Congress, the content will be married to that theme,” Jensen added.
To learn more about the legislation and the campaign, listen to episode 004 of the HMEB Podcast, which will be released on March 14.