After undergoing a prophylactic double mastectomy at the age of 23 to reduce her risk of developing cancer, and being frustrated at the lack of information out there for younger women, Lindsay Avner launched the group Bright Pink to educate young women about breast cancer and preventative health.

You may wonder why such a young woman chose to have both breasts removed just to reduce the risk — but the fact is, she’s not alone. She and many other women with the BRCA gene — a gene that will predispose women to developing breast and ovarian cancer — or its mutation, who have seen moms and grandmothers die from the disease, are opting to be safe rather than sorry. "It’s not just an old woman’s disease," one BRCA-positive woman told CNN.

"The funny thing is that nothing in your body has changed the day you hear the results," Avner tells CNN. "You were either born with it or you weren’t. You are just going armed with more knowledge."

The National Cancer Institute says about 12 percent of women in the general population will develop breast cancer sometime during their lives, compared with about 60 percent of women who have inherited a harmful mutation in BRCA1 or BRCA2. That means a woman who has inherited a harmful BRCA mutation is about five times more likely to develop breast cancer than a woman who doesn’t have the gene.

The organization Avner has launched — there are now multiple chapters in eight U.S. cities — and her group has published books on the topic. Avner says the goal is to provide younger women with the life-saving information their mothers and grandmothers didn’t have available.

Watch CNN’s story on Avner and other brave women facing cancer below: