PUBLISHED: 25th August 2026
by Leslie Ferris Yerger, CEO and Founder
At My Density Matters, we believe knowledge is one of the most powerful tools a woman can have for her breast health. That belief is at the heart of our Check Your Chart program, and we are glad to share it with the FORCE community as we kick off Breast Cancer Awareness Month this year.
Here is the simple truth: nearly half of all women have dense breast tissue. Density is not just a description. It is a real, measurable factor that can make cancer harder to find on a mammogram, and it can raise a woman's risk of developing breast cancer. A mammogram is the only way to know your breast density, which is why getting one matters. For women who get a mammogram, the answer is often sitting right in their report, waiting to be read.
That is where Check Your Chart comes in. It asks women to do one thing: look at their mammogram report and find the words that describe their breast density. Categories like "fatty," "scattered," "heterogeneously dense," or "extremely dense" are usually used, often in a single sentence. Once a woman knows her density category, she has what she needs to have a real conversation with her doctor about what it means for her and what screening might make sense beyond a standard mammogram. Our resources page has tools to help prepare for and have that conversation.
There is one more step we ask every woman to take, and it may be the most important: read the report to the bottom. This is where a radiologist sometimes recommends additional screening, such as an ultrasound or MRI, because of dense tissue. We have seen this recommendation get missed more often than anyone would expect, lost in medical language, buried at the end of the report and overlooked by patients and busy physicians. When that happens, a woman may not receive the additional screening her radiologist believed she needed. Check Your Chart closes that gap.
We built this program because awareness alone is not enough. Women, especially those who face extra barriers to screening and follow-up care, deserve clear, simple guidance that turns a piece of paper into action, a value we hold at the center of everything we do.
This is also why our partnership with FORCE means so much to us. Like FORCE, we believe that women facing hereditary and elevated cancer risk deserve to be fully informed and fully empowered. Whether risk comes from family history, genetics or breast density, the goal is the same: find cancer as early as possible, while it is still curable.
This Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we invite the FORCE community to try Check Your Chart. Pull out your last mammogram report. Find your density category. Read all the way to the bottom. Then talk to your doctor about what you find. It takes just a few minutes, and it could make all the difference.
Learn more about Check Your Chart at mydensitymatters.org/programs/check-your-chart.