September 20, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Photograph by Diane Bondareff
Roberta Levy Schwartz recalls the frustration she felt when she was seeking help after being diagnosed with breast cancer at 27.
“I used to go to advocacy meetings and I used to go up to people at [Susan G.] Komen [for the Cure] or I used to go up to people at [National Breast Cancer Coalition] and they said, ‘You know what? Young women are really not our issue and it’s really not that big of a group,’” says Ms. Levy Schwartz. In response she helped found, in 1998, the Young Survival Coalition, a charity in New York that seeks to raise awareness of and offer support to women under 40 with breast cancer.
Although the majority of women diagnosed with the disease are older, one in 233 women in their 30s receive the diagnosis, according to the National Cancer Institute. Despite that reality, says Michele Przypyszny, the Young Survival Coalition’s chief executive officer, young women still meet shock from doctors when seeking medical care, and that can often get in the way of speedy and effective treatment.
Through its online bulletin boards, programs that connect members by phone with other breast-cancer survivors, an annual conference for young women affected by the disease, and fund-raising events that gather survivors and raise public awareness, the Young Survival Coalition spreads its message. The group has members in countries such as Australia, Canada, Germany, Thailand, and Venezuela, in addition to the United States, according to its leader. It operates on an annual budget of $3-million; 55 percent of the organization’s support comes from corporations and other grant makers, with the rest coming from individuals.
Events like the group’s fourth annual York Tour de Pink, scheduled for this month as a four-day, 200-mile bicycle ride from Hershey, Pa. (home of the Hershey Company, which owns the event’s sponsor, York Peppermint Patties), to New York, further the charity’s efforts to break down the feelings of solitude experienced by young women with breast cancer. In addition, the 100 participants in this year’s ride are expected to generate a total of $250,000.
“The riders are a combination of breast-cancer survivors, friends and family members, caregivers, or somebody whose sister might have died from breast cancer at a young age,” says Ms. Przypyszny. “But they form such long-lasting bonds and support each other through this, and it’s very much as if it was a friend supporting a friend through a breast-cancer diagnosis.”
