Cultural fears about breast cancer detection overcome in award-winning advertising campaign.

21.11.06

A campaign to change misconceptions about breast cancer amongst women of various ethnic communities has been recognised at the National Multicultural Marketing Awards dinner in Sydney tonight hosted by the Premier, Morris Iemma.

The National Multicultural Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign won the Advertising category of the Awards which have been run for the last seventeen years by the Community Relations Commission For a multicultural NSW, to highlight innovation in dealing with cultural diversity.

The Chair of the Commission, Stepan Kerkyasharian, said: “The campaign should be warmly congratulated for delivering a message which is personal, sensitive and difficult for all women but more so in some cultural and religious groups.

“The project set out to prepare accurate and culturally appropriate info rmation in relevant languages to help women make info rmed decisions about their breast health and if necessary about breast cancer treatment,” he said.

The aim was to help women of various cultural and religious backgrounds overcome cultural influences and beliefs which could act as barriers to early detection and treatment of breast cancer which affects one in eleven Australian women.

The target group was Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Italian and Vietnamese speakers.

According to the campaign’s official entry for the Multicultural Marketing Awards: “Research has clearly shown that women’s lack of knowledge and misconception of cancer screen often cause delays in diagnosis and treatment. Some women believe breast cancer is contagious, that talking about the disease will bring it one, that it is associated with yin and yang imbalance or that it represents punishment for past behaviour.

Advertising and info rmation worked on overcoming those cultural beliefs to ensure that women came forward a soon as possible for screening and if necessary treatment.

The big break-through was that the multi-lingual advertising led women to be able to make comfortable phone calls in their first language to discuss this sensitive issue with the anonymity of a telephone line. The lines were answered by bilingual breast cancer info rmation consultants.

“This is wonderful multicultural marketing! Can there be any better argument for the employment of multicultural marketing than that it saves lives?”, Mr Kerkyasharian said.