Our breast health educator spreads the word far and wide
From a roomful of 1,300 health professionals to a whispered conversation with a single, scared woman, our national breast health educator has been busy raising awareness of breast cancer amongst Kiwis.
Debra Leutenegger has travelled from Whangarei to Dunedin and Taranaki to Hawkes Bay, attended countless Pink Ribbon Breakfasts, stood in the mud at Fieldays and driven hundreds of kilometres to visit GP clinics in the South Island, all with the aim of reaching deeply into every community.
Wherever she goes, she hands out printed information and offers helpful advice to people who often have very little understanding of breast cancer or the services offered by BCFNZ.
Debra has represented BCFNZ at four major GP conferences (two of them with our breastcare nurse Sarah Munro) attended by nearly 5,000 health professionals. She has worked to communicate with hard-to-reach rural communities, ethnic communities and the corporate world where many women work.
She estimates she has spoken to around 10,000 people since she took up the role a year ago – but it doesn’t stop there. “It’s about how that message disseminates after I’ve spoken. It doesn’t just stay in that room,” she says.
She has attended two Fieldays – Central Districts and Mystery Creek – and had conversations with hundreds of individuals, including a teenage boy wanting information for his aunt who had breast cancer, and a woman who’d just been diagnosed but hadn’t yet found the words to tell her family.
Sometimes, the most important discussions are one on one. At a corporate Pink Ribbon Breakfast, Debra sat alongside a woman in her late 40s who was too afraid to have her first mammogram. By describing the process in a positive way, Debra was able to allay the fears of the woman, who then felt equipped to go ahead with her appointment.
Our breastcare nurse, Sarah Munro, has also been busy spreading the word about our support services, mybc and resources. She has educated all practice nurses at ProCare and Total Health Care medical centres in Auckland on managing signs and symptoms of breast cancer, equipping them with the knowledge they need at the front line of the battle against this disease.