It's Be the Choice with an update! Make sure to read all the way to the bottom for your invitation to our May 4th event!

View this email in your browser

Friends,

We are delighted to finally be in touch with you: our friends, family members, fellow cancer patients, and doctors. You haven't heard much from us over the last while, but don't worry, we've been hard at work bringing to fruition our common vision: enhancing treatment choices for breast cancer patients.

Here are a few highlights about what we're up to, including an update about the organization, the Decision Tree, and our upcoming fundraiser (May 4th in Ottawa).

We promise to keep you updated on a more regular basis from now on!

On behalf of the Be the Choice Team,
Melanie Adrian
Executive Director
Be the Choice

Read more about Be the Choice on our snazzy new website: bethechoice.org

At the beginning, Be the Choice was about creating a video about surgical choices. But we've evolved. A lot. Be the Choice now seeks to become the premier decision making site where patients and their families can go and, in their own time and place, understand what they're up against. For free.

What we've realized is that we are innovating the field of decision sciences by providing an online tool that is visually compelling, medically comprehensive, and translates complex medical terminology into plain English. It's about bringing the ideas to the patient in ways that we all understand. And that's what we call empowerment.

These are some images of what our tool currently looks like. We haven't made this public yet, as we still need to work on the software and finalize the text. That's what we're working on now.

We have an amazing team at work behind the scenes at Be the Choice:

Professor Melanie Adrian Executive Director Co-Founder melanie@bethechoice.org	Robin Beasley Director, Content Curation Co-Founder robin@bethechoice.org
Jennifer Elliott Director, Communications jen@bethechoice.org	Professor Kristin Bright Director, Research and Development kristin@bethechoice.org
Anna North Director, Digital anna@bethechoice.org	Kris Liljefors Director, Strategic Planning and Fundraising kris@bethechoice.org

Board of Advisors

Dr. Carrolyn Nessim
Oncologic Surgeon (Breast)
Ottawa Hospital
Ottawa, ON, Canada

Dr. Ronen Avram
Plastic Surgeon (Oncology)
Juravinski Cancer Centre
Hamilton, ON, Canada

Dr. Karen Ling
Pharmacist
Shoppers Drug Mart
Ottawa, ON, Canada

Ms. Felicitas Adrian
Vice President, Marketing and Communications
Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada
Toronto, ON, Canada

Prof. Stephen Marks
François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Health and Human Rights
Department of Global Health and Population
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, U.S.A.

Ms. Maria Herminia Graterol Garrido
Human Rights Lawyer / Strategist
New York, New York, U.S.A.

We have fundraised $15,000 and have recently applied for a grant to help us further develop the Tree. Now we need to raise more money to improve the site and bring this resource to patients. Please help us.

We cordially invite you and your families and friends to Cube Gallery in Westboro, Ottawa, on May 4th, 2016. The evening will feature the work of acclaimed Canadian indie musician Jon Hynes, emerging Canadian Artists with Studio Sixty Six, and delicious wine and appetizers.

Get ready to experience some of the best new art that Ottawa has to offer, all highlighting the themes of the evening: choice and empowerment. We look forward to seeing you there!

To purchase tickets: http://bethechoice.org/events/

Thank you to all of you who helped us test our Tree on December 12th, 2015. Thirty-eight of you helped us and gave us great feedback on how to improve the Tree and make it more accessible. We are now incorporating your ideas before we release the Tree to the public.

In the picture: Kris Liljefors and Robin Beasely (Back);
Kristin Bright and Melanie Adrian (Front)