Disease awareness daze: Do patients and people tune out health condition months and related marketing?
Most people know that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. But it’s also Healthy Lung, National ADHD Awareness and Spina Bifida Awareness month. And it also includes individual weeks for Mental Health Illness Awareness and International Infection Prevention, along with separate awareness for World Sight, World Osteoporosis and World Psoriasis days.
If it feels like every month, week or day comes with the recognition of a different health condition, that’s partly because it does. There are more than 200 health and disease awareness observances officially recognized by Congressional resolutions in the US — from the well-known ones like this month’s Breast Cancer Awareness to the smaller, focused ones like Cholangiocarcinoma Awareness Month in February.
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