MBC Alliance Launches Series of Slide Decks for Advocates

/ /by

The MBC Alliance is excited to introduce a new series of downloadable presentation slides designed to support advocacy work for metastatic breast cancer.

Created to serve as a professional, gold-standard resource for advocates who are presenting at events, the decks were developed collaboratively by an Alliance subcommittee of seasoned MBC advocates. This new series of four decks covers important areas of MBC education for various audiences – from basic background about metastatic breast cancer and understanding how it is treated, to current areas of opportunity in MBC research and education for caregivers.

Each deck includes the real faces and voices of MBC patients or caregivers; and is accompanied by a resource guide that empowers presenters to more deeply explore the facts and statistics used to create these science-based materials.

“The Alliance has many talented, involved, and connected patient members, and these slide decks give them a fantastic tool to support their advocacy activities,” says project lead Martha Carlson, who serves as a mentor for new advocates. “We have learned there is also a need to explain MBC in an accessible way to new employees in the MBC nonprofit sector, and even to industry. Though it may seem impossible that people don’t know about MBC, given the number of deaths each year, the fact is that we need to educate a lot of people – and the advocacy slide decks can help make that easier to do.”

How to Use the Advocacy Slide Decks

While the decks are copyrighted and must remain branded with the Alliance logo and template, they are freely available to all advocates – including nonmembers – for download and use. They can also be accessed by the general public for educational purposes.

To make use of these materials for advocacy work, follow these simple steps:

  • Watch an instructional video on how to use the slides to give an effective presentation.
  • Identify your audience’s specific interests and level of knowledge about MBC.
  • Determine whether a single deck serves your needs, or if you prefer to curate content from multiple decks.
  • Download and review all content in accompanying support documents.
  • Present the information, and share your feedback on how you used the slides and how they could be made better.

Though each deck is designed to stand alone – for example, Deck 1 could be presented to an audience unknowledgeable about MBC – slides from various decks can also be mixed and matched to create the talk perfect for a specific audience.

“Being able to personalize how you use individual slides is a purposeful part of this effort,” says Carlson. “These resources are out just in time for October, when there are many opportunities to speak during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The advocacy slide decks will make it easy to say ‘Yes!’ to those opportunities, and hopefully even inspire advocates to seek out spaces and places where MBC has not been a part of the conversation.”

The MBC Alliance is grateful to the subcommittee members who led the creation of the advocacy slide decks: Martha Carlson, Stephanie Walker, Shirley Mertz of the Metastatic Breast Cancer Network and Caroline Johnson of Twisted Pink.