This year has felt big and fast. So fast, that some of what I was working on last February feels like years ago. It’s always a bit shocking to look back and see just how much Rethink gets done in a year with a small budget and a small but mighty team. It’s been go, go, go all year and I’m looking forward to some down time away from work to process and let everything percolate. And to rest up for what is going to be an even bigger year at Rethink! We have a milestone birthday coming up next fall so keep your eyes on this space for updates and ways to get involved. But first, I want to celebrate another year of successful programming to advocacy progress and the funders and fundraisers that made it all possible.
On the support and education side, our virtual programming continued to meet people right where they’re at in their breast cancer experience. That is the nice thing about Zoom—accessibility, especially for those busy navigating treatment in the prime of life. Between our professionally facilitated support groups and peer support through Mentoring Matters, we held 62 support sessions and tackled topics ranging from navigating metastatic breast cancer to grief, fear of recurrence, boundaries, work, parenting, sex and body, and life after treatment. These spaces offered validation, understanding, insight, information, empowerment and perhaps best of all, community. For us, making change always starts with addressing isolation and building community.
On the community building front, a highlight for our team was expanding in-person programming this past year. Rethink Local Meetups launched in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. We also had our Rethink + Rewild day retreat. All were beautiful reminders of the healing power of being together in person. Creating spaces where people can just be, without explaining their bodies, their fatigue, their emotions, surrounded by others who get it, is one of the most impactful parts of our work.
One of the benefits of Rethink being so on the ground with the community we serve is that we can bring that lens and experience to research. In addition to all our 62 support sessions, Rethink collaborated on more than 20 research initiatives this past year! These spanned topics like risk-stratified breast screening, genetic testing access for Black women, survivorship models, exercise and risk reduction, genitourinary syndrome and menopause and many others, speaking to the breadth and depth of needs for young women with breast cancer.
And speaking of needs, because so much is changing in the breast cancer treatment and care landscape and in our culture itself, it was important to take stock. A highlight this past year was teaming up with Sinai Health to launch our National Needs Assessment for young women with breast cancer. It was a long, in-depth survey, so we were thrilled to receive 467 responses. We’ve started exploring the results, which we hope to publish, and which will inform our programming and advocacy in the next few years.
But before we take on too much new advocacy, we have more work to do in 2026 to continue driving progress on our current top campaigns. A few notes to share on what’s on my mind in advocacy and progress I am celebrating:
- The launch of Ontario’s FAST program. Usually, acronyms in the healthcare space are awkward and confusing, especially in research and government initiatives. FAST I can get behind! Ontario launched the new Funding Accelerated for Specific Treatment (FAST) program, and this pilot answers our exact advocacy ask from #BreakThroughTheBS, so thank you to all of you who wrote letters and amplified our campaign. It helped! The first breast cancer treatment, Itovebi, has recently gone through the FAST pilot. Itovebi is a targeted second line therapy for metastatic patients with a PIK3CA mutation. And guess what? It’s an oral therapy, which brings me to…
- #BitterestPill As much as I’ve been congratulating the Ontario government on FAST, I’ve also been the squeaky wheel reminding them that FAST doesn’t fix the longstanding issues with access to take-home cancer drugs in Ontario. Rethink started advocating on this issue through Cancertainty Coalition almost 12 years ago because we knew an important new class of targeted treatments for MBC, called, “CDK 4/6 inhibitors,” which were administered in a pill form, would be coming to Canada in a few years. At the time, we were experiencing waves of loss in the MBC community, and we knew timely, seamless access would be crucial. Not only has this issue remained unresolved, despite a commitment from the Government almost three years ago, but it’s grown. Two of the CDK 4/6s have moved into the early breast cancer setting, being used to treat early breast cancer with a high risk of recurrence. That means even more breast cancer patients in Ontario are affected by delays, dollars and distress to receive their targeted oral cancer therapy. That’s why we’re not giving up. We closed out the year by reigniting the conversation with the Premier’s office. We made it clear we don’t need yet another roundtable (been there, done that) we just need the right people in the room to “get ‘er done.”
- Growing interest in risk-stratified approach to breast screening. This is another topic Rethink has been involved in for over a decade that is, at last, gaining traction. A one-size-fits-all screening system has never worked well for young women, high-risk women, or underserved communities and, finally, the research world is catching up. What I love about a risk-stratified approach is the opportunity for risk reduction that it brings.
- Risk reduction ties to another topic I am thrilled to see gaining traction too: the evolving science around exercise and risk reduction. Movement is becoming central to prevention, survivorship and metastatic thrivership. Inclusion in exercise studies is something our metastatic advisory board has advocated for over the years. Today, new research continues to affirm why our MBC board is so passionate about inclusion: Exercise can improve physical function, treatment tolerance and quality of life for people living with metastatic disease. This is exciting and reinforces why we must continue our advocacy work to ensure that people with MBC are never left out of research that affects their lives. That starts with making sure they “count.”
- MBC Data: From “#MakeMBCCount” in Canada to global movement:A highlight for me this past year was teaming up with Breast Cancer Network Australia and Breast Cancer Now (UK) on an event to raise global visibility of the metastatic community. In July, we launched a joint advocacy pledge to ensure that everyone living with MBC is counted, recognized and supported. Currently, people with MBC are being hidden in plain sight. They are excluded from provincial and national health data, overlooked in services and left out of important decisions that shape their care. Our joint advocacy pledge is a united call for urgent, coordinated action to systematically collect MBC data and use it as the foundation for better outcomes and equity for everyone living with the disease. Following the joint event, Rethink completed a pan-Canadian environmental scan on MBC recurrence data barriers here in Canada that will shape a bold roadmap for next year. We closed out the year with a poster presentation on this topic at the Advanced Breast Cancer Consensus Meeting (ABC8) where we won best poster! And just had a wonderfully productive meeting with Australia on how they made progress, and what we could try here at home.
- Give-A-Care! This beloved program relaunched just over two months ago. Fresh new website, new products, and, best of all, way more guidance for those newly diagnosed and for their friends. The guidance is real talk that perfectly blends support and practical advice. Just a few weeks before launch, we received an incredibly kind favour from a friend of Rethink who worked her magic to bring about a generous donation of out-of-home advertising space. I was expecting a couple random billboards. What we received was a massive amount of donated space—on billboards and taxi tops, outside arenas and even in elevators and bathrooms. Our sassy tag line and bold, colourful product looked so amazing! And people have responded. Our orders have jumped and that success inspired our fun “pay-it-forward” campaign for Giving Tuesday. Thank you to all of you who donated! We were able to create 100 care packages to distribute through cancer centres. Earlier this week, two of our Key Collaborators delivered them to their own care teams with a request to hand them out to any newly diagnosed young women. They had so much fun playing holiday elves, knowing the kits will be a small bright spot for someone like them newly navigating treatment, especially over the holidays.
Thank you to all our Key Collaborators, and many others in the breast cancer community, who helped inform our work and even co-create with us this past year. You’ve helped shape all this work that has had such an impact in 2025. And we couldn’t do the work we do with and for our community without the incredible support from our partners, supporters and everyone who fundraised for Rethink this past year. From Turning the Page on Cancer to Pinkleball to the dozens of other fundraising efforts and generous donors that allow us to keep doing what we do best. THANK YOU!
We stretch every dollar raised and received and are proud that 24.5 years into Rethink, we are still that small but mighty, scrappy but sensible, relevant and relatable friendly disruptor making tangible change for the breast cancer community and those that love ’em. As we head into a milestone year for Rethink, I feel proud of how far we’ve come and so fired up about what’s next. That includes making 2026 our biggest, boldest year to date!
Thank you for being part of Rethink. I’m wishing you a wonderful holiday season. Here’s to a little bit of rest and recovery so we can head into the new year ready to keep “rethinking” breast cancer, together. 💗
— MJ DeCoteau, Rethink’s Founder + Executive Director