More Than A Magazine, A Movement
For Tina Hernandez-Boussard, solving the inequities within our healthcare system is only possible when we ensure that the people who collect, analyze and interpret data to make decisions, are as diverse as those who will be affected by those decisions.
Decreased screening rates and fear of COVID has delayed cancer diagnoses for many, delaying treatment and possibly worsening outcomes for cancer patients. Pandemic related reduction of cancer research and treatment threatens to derail future efforts to find more effective detection and treatment methods. Similar to COVID-19, the disparities have disproportionately impacted communities of color.
There’s been a lot of discussion of “shaming” recently on the Ms. Blog: fat-shaming, slut-shaming, young-mother shaming. Let’s add to that list cancer-shaming. Last week, singer/songwriter Melissa Etheridge, in an interview with the Washington Blade, was asked how she felt—as a breast cancer survivor—about actor/director Angelina Jolie’s public announcement that she had undergone a prophylactic […]
Of course you’ve heard that actor/director Angelina Jolie went public this week with an op-ed piece in The New York Times about her decision to undergo a double mastectomy in the wake of finding out that she is positive for the BRCA1 genetic mutation, which dramatically increases her risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. […]
The BRCA genes were discovered in 1994 and 1995, but when you visited your doctor anytime from 1995 through the early 2000s, chances are that she or he did not recommend that you test for a mutation on the genes that would indicate an increased chance of developing ovarian or breast cancers. Why not? Because the paternalistic […]
Today, September 30, is the last day of Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month; tomorrow, October 1, is the first day of Breast Cancer Month. Are they connected in any way other than the fact that they are both (mostly) women’s cancers? Absolutely. Those of us who carry mutations on the genes known as BRCA1 and BRCA2 […]