Since the start of Breast Cancer Awareness initiatives in 1985, over 517,000 lives have been saved from better treatment and proactive screening, according to the American Cancer Society.
"Today is a day to celebrate forty years of incredible progress in ending cancer as we know it, for everyone," Dr. Shanti Sivendran, senior vice president of cancer care support at the American Cancer Society and medical oncologist at Penn Medicine, told ABC News.
In the 1980s in the United States, only one in four women were getting screened for breast cancer, and access to screening technology was limited, Sivendran said.
That began to change in October 1985, when the American Cancer Society partnered with other groups to launch a week-long event devoted to raising awareness about breast cancer. The campaign quickly gained momentum as more organizations joined in, and by 1990 President George H. W. Bush issued a proclamation officially designating October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
