The principal barrier to breast cancer treatment is late detection because of the lack of awareness about self-examination steps. The Health Purse addressed this barrier using a cultural habit to educate them and serve as a reminder for regular checks that could help early detection and save more lives.

There are no restrictions or regulations regarding women's health awareness messages in India. The normal practice is to get the message corroborated by medical experts. Our initiative was supported and conducted with the Cancer Patients Aid Association - India's pre-eminent organisation for Cancer prevention and guidance.

The Health Purse

A purse that not only protects your money, but protects you from the dangers of Breast Cancer as well.

The best way to effect any behaviour change is to ride on existing cultural behaviour.

A 'Batua' is the traditional Indian women's purse. Women in rural India have a unique practice when it comes to protecting their money - they keep their purses in their blouses.

Could this unique habit also help protect them from breast cancer? Riding on this age-old habit, we designed purses with illustrative visuals of women checking themselves - which served as a reminder to perform the simple breast self-examination steps given inside. The purses were printed on skin-friendly cloth and designed using 9 famous Indian folk-art styles.

The 'batua' thus became a purse that didn't just protect their wealth, but their health as well.

The Health Purses were given out as a part of Mahindra Rise breast cancer/health awareness drives in Madkepada, Belwadi, Kinipada, Katkariwadi, Sutarpada, Warkhanda among other remote villages in Maharashtra. These sessions started in March, 2018 and are continuing through till May. Mahindra gets in touch with local healthcare workers to help set up the awareness camps in community centres and village health centres. They inform the women in the village in advance to ensure attendance at these sessions which are conducted with the support of CPAA - Cancer Patients Aid Association. A typical session lasts around 2 hours, where women are taught how to perform a breast self-examination at home, before giving them the purses that serve as a reminder. The initiative is being scaled up to reach even more women in media-dark parts of the country.

In the first phase of this direct outreach programme, 2500 Health Purses were distributed to Rural Indian women across 6 villages. The impact can be gauged from the fact that:

a) The Cancer Patients Aid Association of India not only conducted the health workshops in these 6 villages, they also distributed the Health purses, a confirmation of the relevance of the messaging.

b) Both Mahindra Rise and the CPAA are committed to spread this initiative to many more villages through the year.

c) The task of the programme was to help women understand the severity of breast cancer, the need for self-examination and the necessity to remind themselves to do this regularly. The Health Purse is a reminder tool and once it replaces the existing purses in the womens' daily lives, the behaviour change would have been achieved.

The Health Purse is a simple tool that serves to educate and remind women of rural India to check themselves regularly for breast cancer. In rural India, it's culturally taboo to openly talk about women's health issues, so the reminder medium had to be personal and intimate.

While incidence of breast cancer is on the rise, media reach is very low in these remote villages.

Because of the sensitive nature of the topic, the solution was to hand out these purses directly through an outreach programme that travelled from village to village to engage with and educate them.

The priorities of the women in rural India are centred around taking care of their families. They have neither the time nor the inclination to think about their own health - very often waiting for symptoms of illness to manifest to a degree that is hard to cure.

To increase the early detection of breast cancer, a new behaviour had to be introduced to them. They had to be taught how to examine themselves and to do it regularly.

Because the reach of media is limited in these villages, the campaign was part of a direct outreach programme that travelled from village to village to engage with and educate women. This allowed for the message to be delivered in an environment where they felt safe and comfortable.

As per the Journal of Business Research, the lack of early diagnosis of breast cancer could kill 76,000 Indian women a year by 2020. The threat is larger in rural areas where one third of the women are unaware of breast cancer and 90% of them unaware of the possibility of self-examination of their breasts.

The only way to avert such a catastrophe is to spread awareness and encourage action. Committed to health and safety of rural India, Mahindra Rise had to intervene.

The objective of the campaign is to create a sustainable solution to reach women in rural India and educate them about breast cancer and demonstrate how they could examine themselves in the manner that was easy to understand and to do.