Breast Cancer Action

In 1990, a group of women living with breast cancer in the San Francisco Bay Area were seeking information about the causes and treatment of their disease. They encountered unresponsive government agencies and private organizations that provided inadequate, superficial information—not the evidence-based data they were looking for. They got angry and turned that anger into action by forming Breast Cancer Action.

The first meeting was held in founder Elenore Pred's living room. "We are meeting to organize Breast Cancer Action," the flyer for the meeting announced. "Our goals are education and political action to prevent a further rise in breast cancer." One of the group's first acts was a meeting with the director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to demand that the agency address the breast cancer epidemic. Founding members Elenore Pred, Susan Claymon, Belle Shayer, and Linda Reyes attended this meeting along with other breast cancer activists. Later, following the death of Pred, Susan Claymon became the first breast cancer activist to address the President's Cancer Panel in Washington, D.C. The actions of these founding women framed breast cancer not as an individual problem but as a public health crisis requiring systemic solutions, with an emphasis on empowering women living with and at risk of the disease.

In 1995 Barbara Brenner became the organization's first executive director, a position she held until 2010 when she retired due to non-breast cancer-related health issues. She was significant in increasing the organization's membership from 3,500 to more than 15,000, and increasing its emphasis on environmental issues and social critiques of the use of breast cancer activism.

Since its founding, BCAction has continued as an advocacy group dedicated to breast cancer activism at local, state and federal levels. The organization sees breast cancer not as an individual issue but a "national public health emergency." Their work has included an emphasis on more effective and less toxic breast cancer treatments that keep the needs of the public interest first; decreasing involuntary environmental exposures that put people at increased risk for breast cancer; and creating awareness that not only genes but also social injustices like political, economic, and racial inequities can lead to unequal outcomes of the disease.