Why Pink Matters

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and a time for all of us to redouble our efforts to eradicate the second-leading killer of women in the United States.

When my husband and I bought NYC Community Media in 2012 and, in June of this year, added the Brooklyn-based Community News Group to our media company, we realized we were taking on a big responsibility. Our publications reach more than a million New Yorkers each week, offering us a broad platform to support causes that can impact our readers and wider communities.

Letter from the Publisher

My husband and I are also a family that lives and works in New York City, and we are committed to giving back to the communities we serve. Our company’s support for Breast Cancer Awareness Month is just one step toward meeting that goal.

Like most people, we have had friends and family who have battled cancer, including a close friend who has survived three bouts with breast cancer.

Anyone who has watched the impact of this terrible disease on sufferers and their loved ones understands the urgent need to find a cure.

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The good news is that better early detection and treatment therapies are boosting survival rates.

We are pleased to note that some of the best work against breast cancer is being done in the metropolitan area. Our medical institutions are pushing the limits of possibility with their surgical excellence, playing pivotal roles in discovering the genes that cause breast cancer, leading to surgical techniques that are now treatment gold standards.

At the grassroots level, a groundswell of community support is financing critical breast cancer studies with innovative fundraisers around town.

Thanks to the support of our advertisers, our media group is donating $7,500 — and will provide free promotional services — to the American Cancer Society’s “Making Strides Against Breast Cancer” campaign (makingstrides.acsevents.org), whose annual October walk at locations in each of the five boroughs raised nearly $6 million last year to help battle the disease.

Community News Group is proud to partner with Maimonides Medical Center, Eastchester Center for Cancer Care, Aviator Sports and Events Center, Coney Island Hospital, Estée Lauder Companies, Flushing Hospital Medical Center, Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, Queens County Savings Bank, Winthrop University Hospital, and all of this week’s advertisers in honoring and recognizing the Pink Ribbon campaign founded by the Estée Lauder Companies, now recognized as a worldwide symbol of breast health.

We hope our embrace of the pink message will encourage our readers to turn to their families and friends and ask if they have been screened or offer to go with them for this critical, life-saving examination.

Jennifer Goodstein is the president of Community News Group.