Cancer Care

Due to a wide variety of factors, many of them media-related, breast cancer has come to be seen as a “White womens’ disease.”
As the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Komen Race for the Cure, the largest series of 5K runs/fitness walks in the world, with well over 1 million participants since 2005, the agency is making a real effort to show that breast cancer is the most common cancer diagnosis among African American women. But it doesn’t have to be fatal.
Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings
“A diagnosis of breast cancer is not a death sentence,” says Gloria Ladson-Billings, the Kellner Family Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a longtime board member for the Susan G. Komen Foundation and a 17-year survivor of breast cancer. “It’s a scary thing — particularly among the African American community. To know that there are incredible treatments for cancer and that there are a lot of women not only surviving but thriving is important.”
Studies have shown that when African American women follow the same preventive measures as White women, their death rates from breast cancer are very similar. However, African American women are more likely than White women to be diagnosed at later stages of the disease and are more likely to die from it. Often, there’s a problem of people not understanding preventive care.
“All too often, we just go [to the doctor] when something hurts,” Ladson-Billings says. “It’s exacerbated in communities that have less health care: ‘Why would I go? Is it going to cost something, when maybe nothing is wrong?’ The challenge is to help people understand that screenings or mammographies are not a waste of time nor a waste of their money. Indeed, the preventive aspect of it is what helps us have better survival rates.”
Michelle Heitzinger, executive director of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, fully understands that the best ways to connect with communities of color is to give them a name and a face they can associate with to help them understand the disease. Far too often that face has been White.
”People want to know who — as opposed to just what — and that’s one of the most effective ways of reaching out in our community,” Heitzinger says. “People will all too often think of it as a ‘White women’s’ disease’, because it’s always a White woman talking about it or a White woman on an ad or a billboard. That’s another reason why it’s so important to have a face that’s local and living on a story.”
And as a 17-year survivor of breast cancer, Ladson-Billings is one of those faces.
Ladson-Billings remembers the very moment when she first discovered it; she was driving cross-country from California to Madison and stopped in a small town in Wyoming to take a shower. “We were in Laramie, Wyoming — I’ll always remember that place — and I was taking a shower and I felt this lump,” Ladson-Billings says. “I was like, ‘This doesn’t feel right!’”
She had just had a full physical exam in April because she had just taken a new job in Madison, and everything had checked out fine. Now it was July. “I wasn’t really thinking cancer, but I did think, ‘Well, it is a lump. Let’s see what it is.’” And after a series of tests and mammograms, she got the news she didn’t want to hear: She had breast cancer.
Ladson-Billings researched her options extensively.
“One of the things I’ve learned through the process is that you have to take responsibility for your own health,” Ladson-Billings says.
“This is the one disease that I’ve had that I’ve learned that I’m in charge. You always think the doctors are in charge, but you are in charge. So, you have to read up on it, talk to people, and you have to make the choices.”

Not everyone takes charge of his or her own health
Heitzinger acknowledge that not all women — especially minority women — have the resources and the curiosity that Ladson-Billings did.
“Somebody like Gloria, who’s an information seeker, may not be the general population we are talking to, and they may not have access to a computer or [the] Internet,” Heitzinger says. “So how do you help people who aren’t information seekers or people who are thrown into a situation without help?”
Statistics show that overall, when African American women are diagnosed, they have larger tumors and their breast cancer has spread further (e.g. to the lymph nodes and to other parts of the body). This is unfortunate, because when breast cancer is discovered at more advanced stages, it is more difficult to treat and survival rates are lower.
“The incidence is lower, but the mortality rate is higher,” Heitzinger says.
That is where the Komen Foundation can come in and help people navigate the system. “Lack of insurance is not a barrier, because of some of the things that [the] Susan G. Komen [Foundation] does,” Heitzinger says.
In more than 18,000 communities across the U.S., more than 75,000 Susan G. Komen for the Cure volunteers work to help fund breast-cancer education, screening, and treatment projects for those who need it most. Over the past five years, Komen for the Cure affiliates, working in concert with local organizations, have awarded more than $160 million in needs-based community grants.