Alanna Vizzoni, a 27-year-old Hoboken resident, was stunned when she got the call from her radiologist relaying her scans showed Stage II invasive ductal carcinoma breast cancer. It was an unfathomable diagnosis for the otherwise healthy Vizzoni.

“I heard the word and really thought like my life was over,”  Vizzoni said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News. “First, first and foremost, it was just like a complete shock. . . I was just in shock that this was happening to me. And it was even a possibility.”

Vizzoni isn’t alone in her experience. A new report from the American Cancer Society finds rates of breast cancer are rising fastest in women under the age of 50 and instances increased overall 1% each year from 2012-2021. The steepest jump, 1.4%, was in white women under 50-years-old and among all Asian American/Pacific Islander women.

Last year, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force announced new guidelines that said women should get a mammogram every other year, starting at age 40, rather than starting at age 50. It cited rising cancer rates among women under 50 as one of the main reasons.

Armed with this information, Vizzoni has turned to her social media followers to share her cancer journey and urge other young women to get screened. Vizzoni reminds them to take changes in their body seriously.

“The first video I posted about it was on Tiktok, maybe a week after I found out,” she said. “I think it was because mostly I felt like if it could happen to me, it could happen to anyone.

“I needed to share that the rates were rising, it was in the realm of possibility,” Vizzoni continued. “Because I think if I had waited any longer, it would have progressed and my diagnosis, my prognosis, would have been way worse.”