The Member is exactly right; it’s important to live healthy lifestyles. It’s important to eat healthy and be active, and that would help you, obviously, reduce your risk of getting cancer, including breast cancer.
Right now we’re currently working on the development of a Cancer Strategy here in Northwest Territories. The five key areas of that strategy will be: primary prevention and health promotion, so finding ways to encourage people to live a healthy and active lifestyle; emotional and cultural safety and delivery of diagnosis, getting people diagnosed early and making sure that when they are diagnosed there are supports throughout the Northwest Territories that they can utilize in their journey; we’ll talk about integrating patient supports and services along that journey; promotion of screening and early detection services; and empower patients to be effective self-advocates.
But this is going to take more than just the Government of the Northwest Territories. This is going to take partnerships. We have been working with the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer and we’ve been working on a number of different fronts, including things to reduce childhood obesity through education, reducing chronic disease by improving lifestyle choices, enhance relationships between care providers and Aboriginal cancer patients, strengthen the provision of high-quality continuous treatment, and survivorship care to Aboriginal care patients. So there are a number of
things we’re doing. We’re doing that in partnership with different groups and we have been working with residents who have had or gone through the cancer journey to share their stories and talk about healthy eating, healthy living and getting diagnosed early. Thank you.