Crisco co-hosts Are You Dense Day to raise awareness

HARTFORD - State Sen. Joseph J. Crisco, Jr., D-Woodbridge, co-chair of the legislature’s Insurance and Real Estate Committee, was joined today by a bipartisan group of other legislators to co-host Are You Dense Day in the Legislative Office Building.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy delivered welcoming remarks to start the program; Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman also spoke at the event.

According to organizers, Are You Dense Day was planned to, ‘honor Connecticut’s global leadership in breast density legislation’ and raise awareness about how dense breast tissue can mask developing breast cancer from routine mammograms.
Connecticut has enacted a series of laws – beginning in 2005 – requiring notification of women who have dense breast tissue and insurance coverage for additional breast cancer screenings.

“Breast density is a well-established predictor of breast cancer risk, but dense breast tissue masks tumors because they look alike on a routine mammogram,” Crisco said.
“Forty percent of all women are said to have dense breast tissue and yet doctors speak to less than 10 percent of their women patients about it – we have so much more work to do to raise awareness of this critical component of early detection, diagnosis, and treatment.”

Are You Dense Day featured presentations from two radiologists who described the enhanced value of additional screenings for women with dense breast tissue.
“We’re finding small, mammographically occult cancers at a significant rate and we’re able to do that and still be efficient,” said Regina Hooley, M.D., Assistant Professor of Diagnostic Radiology at the Yale School of Medicine, one of the presenters.

“There are too many women who are unaware of their breast density, believe their ‘happy gram’ when it reports ‘normal,’ and are at risk of receiving a late-stage cancer diagnosis,” according to Nancy M. Cappello, Ph.D., founder and Executive Director of Are You Dense, Inc., and one of the organizers of Are You Dense Day.
“Cancers detected early have better treatment and survival outcomes.”

Are You Dense Day underscored Connecticut’s leadership on this issue – there are new laws in 12 other states comparable to those in Connecticut, pending legislation in nearly a dozen other states, and interest from the United States and other national governments.


This is a press release from Crisco's office.