Katie Kaspar, a teacher at New Hyde Park Memorial High School, says she's lucky that her breast cancer was caught early during a routine mammogram when she was 41. "I was really blindsided." said Kaspar. "I didn't have any lump, I didn't feel anything, it was a cluster of cells that would have progressed." Kaspar said about the disease she's been raising awareness about since her diagnosis more than eight years ago. According to a new report from the American Cancer Society, early detection is one the reasons fewer women are now dying from breast cancer.

"Overall, it's a good news, because the mortality rate keeps going down." said Dr. Paolo Boffetta of the Stony Brook Cancer Center. The report looked at breast cancer deaths and diagnoses from 1989 through 2022. It revealed that while fewer women are dying from the disease, more women under 50, are being diagnosed with breast cancer. "It is true that it's not going down equally for all ethnic race groups." said Boffetta. According to the study, AAPI women of all ages had the fastest increase in breast cancer diagnoses. The mortality for American Indian/Alaska native women has not changed since 1990. And Black women continue to be more likely to die from breast cancer, than women of other ethnicities or races. Doctors point to family history and excessive alcohol use as some of the risk factors. They say high BMI (Body Mass Index) and the environment can also affect your risk. "One challenge is to reverse the trend of risk factor, the other challenge is really to give access to all women, in particular minority women." said Dr. Boffetta. Kaspar, says she hopes that by sharing her story, like at the annual 'Pink It Up' day at her high school, an event to raise awareness about breast cancer, more lives might be saved. "It's a mission to stand together, it's a mission of support, it's a mission to educate and I think when you put it out there, more people say, oh I've been impacted by this...and people then start to have a conversation and the conversation then leads to more appointments being made." said Kaspar.

If you would like to read the study, here is a link: https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.3322/caac.21863