OUR CORNER: A rallied community is a strong community
Published 6:04 pm Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Another year, and another Come Walk With Me breast cancer benefit has come to an end.
And what a walk it was (or ride, for those who preferred to fly their pink behind the snarl of a Harley). Roughly twice as many people walked Saturday as have walked in the most successful walks of previous years.
Clearly, the people in and around Sumner care about fighting breast cancer.
Which is awesome. As a long time fan (and owner; thank you, Frito-Lay Inc!) of breasts, it’s always great to see folks rally behind one of our nation’s most deadly health concerns.
When some consider what defines the strength of a community, they might look at figures like employment, mean annual income, the balance of the municipal budget, or other indicators of economic well-being.
Under an economic criterion, I would submit that the willingness of a community to rally behind the fight against an illness is a superior—if indirect—indicator of its strength.
Every living creature has to meet the central needs of survival: food, shelter and comfort. As humans—and therefore as social creatures—we build on those individual needs to solve the problem of societal stability: governance, the rule of law and the establishment of a functional economy.
Only when survival and stability are well taken care of can a society build prosperity.
Now, ask any cancer survivor in what category they would classify their illness, and you can bet your bottom dollar that their answer will be, no contest, survival. And that’s absolutely true for the individual.
But cancer as a societal health issue requires a tremendous allocation of resources—time, expertise, and the money to obtain both—more than any one person can give.
So to see that one local breast cancer benefit has seen a doubling of those able and willing to fight the good fight against the disease shows the community is strong, indeed.
A few closing thoughts:
– Statistically, 122.6 to 124.8 per 100,000 people will be diagnosed with breast cancer in Washington state, placing it in the second-highest tier (on a four-tier system) of breast cancer incidence in the United States. Men are not immune to developing malignancies in their chest.
_ Washington state fares better in comparison to other states in prostate cancer—a cancer affecting men exclusively—residing in the second-lowest tier of incidence. However, the rate of incidence is greater than breast cancer; statistically, 148.2 to 160.9 per 100,000 men are diagnosed with the disease.
– Though tremendous strides have been made in the field of cancer treatment, overall mortality rates have declined only slightly in a generation’s time. One of the more significant declines has been an approximate net 10 percent drop in the lung cancer mortality rate for men: from about 76 percent in 1975 to about 66 percent in 2007 (alarmingly, women’s lung cancer mortality rates have risen more than 20 percent in the same period, though incidence of death from the disease remains lower than men overall). As always, early detection is key. Ask your doctor, or visit the National Cancer Institute website (www.cancer.gov), to learn common self-examination techniques.
