The Guelph General Hospital (GGH) is opening up its Bras for a Cause contest this year to patients and community members to decorate bras for breast cancer awareness.
Participants can use an old bra or buy a new one to decorate for a chance to be one of four winners in the contest. There is an application form on the GGH website that can be printed off, filled out then dropped off with the decorated bra at the front desk of the main hospital entrance. Submissions close on Oct. 23.
“We have run it maybe a handful of times in the past, every year is a little bit more or a little bigger. So this is something fun that we kind of did in our department, and we wanted to get the hospital involved. As patients started learning about it, it's gotten bigger and bigger,” said Julie Power, team lead of mammography and medical radiation technologist at GGH.
The idea behind Bras for a Cause is to raise awareness for not only breast cancer but for women, trans and non-binary folks to get mammography screenings.
Decorating bras can help shed light on the issue by having fun and reducing stigma.
When the contest was in-house for just staff there were judges that have been previous patients and previous breast cancer survivors that were brought in to judge the bras, said Power.
“And this year we thought it would be kind of fun to have more people involved in the voting process as well,” she said.
Photos of the bras will be posted on the GGH Instagram page and people can vote on their favourite bras through its Instagram stories.
When voting concludes there will be an overall winner, best supporting, most creative, and “I’d wear that!" winners.
“It's kind of neat because every bra that comes in does have their own story, right?” Power said.
Everyone who participates has their own reason for it whether it be for fun or a family member who has been affected by breast cancer, she continued.
“I'm very fortunate in the fact that I love what I do. As much as people like I said despise coming for their mammogram we have such a strong relationship with some of our patients. And it's just nice to see that we're making a difference in their lives as well as just kind of spreading that awareness out to the rest of the community to say … it may be kind of scary but we're not as intimidating as you might think.”
“The Ontario Breast Screening Program is set out with the Cancer Care Ontario, and their general guideline is women ages 50 to 74 to have a regular routine screening mammogram every two years,” said Power.
“But the whole idea of the Ontario Breast Screening Program is that it is a self-referral and the patient can do it themselves and they do not need a doctor's requisition.”
Regular mammography screenings are for people who have no symptoms and who may or may not have a family history of breast cancer, Power said.
For those who have symptoms like a lump, bump, discomfort, discharge, dimpling and skin changes should go to their family doctor for a referral for a diagnostic workup and a diagnostic mammogram, she said.
