Breast Cancer Fund: Power Mapping for Policy Change

<p>The following paper is a summary on a 300-hour fieldwork experience at the Breast Cancer Fund. The Breast Cancer Fund (BCF) is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco, CA that partners with organizations across the nation to expand their reach and health education. BCF works to expose and eliminate toxic chemicals in the environment that are linked to breast cancer, immunotoxicity, and reproductive and developmental issues. BCF accomplishes these goals through public awareness and pushing for policy change. In April 2015, Senators Diane Feinstein and Susan Collins introduced the Personal Care Products Safety Act. This is the first bill of its kind in the last 75 years designed to close the gaps on outdated federal law that allows the use of chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects, learning disabilities and other illnesses and chronic diseases in personal care products. Although this bill possesses many strong qualities, moving the industry in the right direction, BCF believes that this bill is not effective and comprehensive enough to truly protect the health of Americans. Thus, for my project, I conducted a strategy known as power mapping to determine which senators of the HELP Committee would be most likely influenced to take a ‘support if amended’ stance. Many factors and influences were taken into account such as financial, political, and personal influences. From the research collected, we were able to infer which officials were best targets for voting in favor of strengthening the current bill. This process would allow for a more comprehensive bill to be passed and ensure the safety and wellness of Americans.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Public Health (MPH)

Level thesis:degree_level

Project/Capstone - Global access

Year dc:date.available

2016

Author dc:creator

• Firouzian, Roxanna

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dhrubajyoti Bhattacharya
• Courtney Keeler
• Marie-Claude Couture

• power mapping
• breast cancer
• policy
• toxic chemicals
• help committee
• public health
• Other Public Health

Repository record dc:identifier

https://repository.usfca.edu/capstone/398

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.usfca.edu:capstone-1406