More Than 80,000 People Expected to Star in Medline's National Pink Glove Dance Video Competition

Staff from Lexington Medical Center, last year's winner, perform their Pink Glove Dance to support breast cancer awareness.

Over the past three months, more than 80,000 people across the country, from healthcare workers and students, to firefighters, athletes and Girl Scouts, have bopped and boogied in pink gloves to star in videos supporting breast cancer awareness as part of Medline Industries, Inc.'s Second Annual National Pink Glove Dance Video Competition. Beginning Oct. 12, the public can go to www.pinkglovedance.com to view the videos and cast their ballot to help determine the nation's favorite Pink Glove Dance video.

Voting runs through Oct. 26, with three winners announced on Nov. 2. The winning organization will receive a $10,000 donation in their name to the breast cancer charity of their choice; second place will receive $5,000 and third place $2,000. Voters are required to have a Facebook® account in order to register their votes.

The national competition, sponsored by Medline the creator of the YouTube® sensation Pink Glove Dance and makers of the pink gloves is expected to include close to 400 submissions from throughout North America, including 43 states, Canada and Puerto Rico. That is almost three times as many entries as last years inaugural contest.  

The response to the competition is truly overwhelming, says Andy Mills, president of Medline. The Pink Glove Dance has become more than a fun music video; it has inspired an international movement of passionate caregivers, healthcare workers, students, firefighters people from all walks of life to show their support in fun, creative ways for people with this terrible disease.

Last year, 139 organizations from 40 states and Canada participated in Medlines inaugural Pink Glove Dance video competition. To view videos from last years competition, go to www.pinkglovedance.com. The competition quickly became a national social media phenomenon with the videos receiving more than 1.2 million views, a half million votes and thousands of tweets, blogs and texts. Lexington Medical Center in West Columbia, S.C., won first place with 61,054 votes more than four times the population of their entire city (14,061).  Click here to view their 2011 winning video.

The original Pink Glove Dance video premiered in November 2009 and featured 200 Portland, Ore. hospital workers wearing pink gloves and dancing in support of breast cancer awareness and prevention. Today, the video has more than 13.6 million views on YouTube® and has inspired more than 1,000 pink glove dance videos and breast cancer awareness events across the country. Because of the overwhelming response to the original video, a sequel was produced in October 2010 featuring 4,000 healthcare workers and breast cancer survivors throughout North America.

Gloves are the first point of contact between the healthcare worker and the patient, says Mills. As a way to extend our breast cancer awareness campaign, we developed a pink glove called Generation Pink®, with the aim of getting people to talk about breast cancer.

Medline is donating a portion of each sale of the pink gloves to the National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF). To date, Medline has donated more than $1 million to the NBCF to fund mammograms for individuals who cannot afford them.

Pink Glove Dance® is registered trademark of Medline Industries, Inc.