Welcome to the N.H.B.C Help Site,

The Hereditary breast cancer helpline was founded in 1996 by Wendy Watson, at a time when little or nothing was generally known about Hereditary Breast Cancer. Two genes had at that time been found which, if faulty, conferred around an 80-90% breast cancer risk. The main aim of the helpline was to ensure that those worried about their family history had access to full information on all the options currently available, referrals where appropriate, and full peer support for whatever option was chosen. Most importantly that those affected had the opportunity to make informed choices. It is also an important role of the helpline to reassure those worrying unnecessarily.

To that end the Helpline has been enormously successful, given the feedback over this past 10 years. From the outset one of the main problems was inequity of service. The Helpline was instrumental in bringing the ‘Management of women at risk’ to the attention of the DoH and last year guidelines were developed and announced by NICE, with representation and approval from the Helpline. The Helpline has also been involved with the current moratorium on ‘Genetic testing and insurance’, and was also active in alerting the government to the worrying situation of the gene patent, which, if allowed to go forward, would have made genetic testing prohibitively expensive for the NHS, thus costing lives.

The Helpline is manned as near as possible 24 hours per day, every day, although an answering service is always available. To date many thousands of calls have been taken worldwide and Wendy has given numerous talks internationally. In 2000 Wendy was called upon to help advise on the launch of a similar incentive in the USA.