| Beginning in the 1990s, the two largest, most influential and well-known breast cancer advocacy organizations in the US, Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the Avon Foundation, began expanding biomedical breast cancer advocacy internationally. Focusing on these organizations' development within the US and subsequent expansion, particularly within Puerto Rico and Italy, within this qualitative intrinsic case study, I draw from medical sociology and social movement theory to analyze how and why these breast cancer advocacy organizations have expanded globally, how advocacy strategies and tactics have been incorporated into diverse political and cultural contexts, and how corporate sponsors, particularly pharmaceutical and medical technology companies, and medical professionals have participated in the organizations' expansion to shed light on the role of transnational health advocacy organizations in processes of biomedicalization and the political economy of health and illness on an international scale. I find that SGKC, as an elite advocacy organization, and the Avon Foundation, as the outgrowth of a corporation, expanded based on a corporate model of market expansion. These organizations socially constructed breast cancer as a critical global epidemic requiring increased awareness and education about breast cancer, thereby positioning their approach to breast cancer as the solution to the problem and legitimizing their expansion efforts. To expand beyond the US, SGKC and the Avon Foundation developed transnational mixed actor coalitions, in which they partnered with governmental agencies, medical professionals and research centers, and corporations, blurring the boundaries between the non-profit social sector and various sectors of society. Implementing only minor political and cultural adaptations to their biomedical advocacy strategies, SGKC and the Avon Foundation, through their global events, campaigns and programs, are facilitating processes of biomedicalization through messages of awareness and education, the dissemination of medical information, the promotion of "surveillance medicine," and the production of new "at-risk" and medical consumer identities. Finally, by promoting cause-related marketing and corporate sponsorship and involvement in advocacy events internationally, SGKC and the Avon Foundation are playing a significant role in the global political economy of health and illness by promoting corporate and consumer-oriented solutions to health problems. |
