Colleges Against Cancer Club attends Bras Across the Bridge
Feel your Boobies Campaign continues raising awareness of breast health
By Sara Walters
Knightly News Reporter
sara.walters@mymail.centralpenn.edu
HARRISBURG – Business administration major Averi Creasy, Central Penn’s Colleges Against Cancer Club adviser Kristin Fike and I attended Bras Across the Bridge last month.
Photo by Averi Creasy
About 75 participants, led by “survivors and thrivers,” paraded on Aug. 17 across the Walnut Street Bridge, which was strung with more than 1,000 bras.
Bras Across the Bridge is held by the Feel Your Boobies Foundation, which was founded in 2004 by Leigh Hurst, a breast cancer survivor. The event raises awareness of breast health and raises money to support the foundation. The event was paused after 2020, but this year, more than $11,000 was raised at the event to support and promote proactive breast health in young women.
While doing a breast self-exam, Hurst felt a lump on her breast that went undetected by doctors during her annual exams, until she pointed it out. After two years, she was sent to get a mammogram, which confirmed the lump was stage 1 breast cancer.
The mission of the Feel Your Boobies Foundation is to use its name to target women under 40 with life-saving calls to action and encourage them to share the message. Feel Your Boobies is the only breast cancer nonprofit organization nationally that focuses 100 percent of its breast health-education programming on women under 40.
Janelle Heiserman is secretary of the Feel Your Boobies Foundation and is a breast cancer survivor, diagnosed in 2019.
“Our mission is based on drawing attention to the message,” Heiserman said. “The bras being strung across the bridge draws a lot of attention to young women to know their breast tissue, feel their boobies, advocate for themselves and just to know that they can get breast cancer, too.”
The foundation’s website states that its vision “is to remain current on the world view and media choices of women under 40 that we target with our mission.”
Comment or idea? Contact KnightlyEditors@CentralPenn.Edu.
Edited by media-club co-adviser and blog editor Professor Michael Lear-Olimpi.
