The Global Fight Against Cancer

Brazilian cancer advocates take fight to lawmakers on country’s first-ever “Lobby Day”

By Patty Avery, Indiana's first State Lead Ambassador from 2007-2010 for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN). She currently serves as a member of the National Ambassador Team for ACS CAN.

Dozens of volunteers lined up for registration, trading stories of their trip to the nation’s capital and hugs for friends from around the country. Suitcases packed into a corner. A session that brought everyone up to date on the progress of a new law to increase funding that will help fight cancer. Time to practice the legislative ask. Small groups in matching shirts huddling in the hallway before their next legislative visit. And stories of positive conversations with staff and legislators.

Sounds like a Lobby Day in the United States, right?

Absolutamente right – Brazil’s first-ever national "Lobby Day" for a patient advocacy group.

For the last three years, the American Cancer Society’s Global Health team, in collaboration with the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN), has worked to build relationships with organizations that are working to fight cancer in Brazil and around the world. It was time to advance the fight through advocacy. FEMAMA, a coalition of 53 breast cancer organizations that serve one million women and their families, accepted the challenge of planning and carrying out a Brazilian Lobby Day and succeeded in equipping more than 120 survivors, volunteers, and organizational staff to take their message to their nation’s 502 federal representatives and senators in Brasilia, the nation’s capital.


FEMAMA cancer advocates gathered in Brasilia, with a banner calling on the government to increase funding to expand access to health care.


The Society’s Global Health staff, in collaboration with ACS CAN staff, worked with the FEMAMA team for more than a year to create the event. I was privileged to join them and the FEMAMA team on their training day and participate in some of their Lobby Day activities in Brasilia.

I’d lived in Brazil for more than eight years in the 1990s, but hadn’t been back to my adopted country for nearly a decade. As my flight broke through the clouds, I saw the red soil and deep green countryside that were once so familiar to me – and hoped my rusty Portuguese would be enough to help me serve and encourage the FEMAMA team and Lobby Day ambassadors.

I shouldn’t have worried. The instant I saw the matching Lobby Day shirts, the folders full of information on their ask and the planned activities, and overheard the excited conversations in the registration line, I knew I was going to be part of an event that any ACS CAN ambassador would recognize.

And like our ACS CAN volunteers, the women who made their way to Brasilia have been touched in some way by cancer. They work every day to prevent breast cancer and ensure that women have access to screening and treatment – and FEMAMA brought them together to take the fight to their elected officials.

Lobby Day kicked off under increasingly cloudy skies with an event on their equivalent of our National Mall in front of the Brazilian Congress. Volunteers shared their stories with the radio, TV, and print reporters who gathered, and just ahead of the rain, the group made its way to the congressional offices.

During the rest of that morning and early afternoon, the group divided into small teams and succeeded in visiting most of the representatives’ and senators’ offices. They met with staff, explaining their ask for dedicated funds in the federal budget to expand access to health care for the nation’s 200 million citizens. As they did, they told their stories of survivorship and caregiving, demonstrating the importance of these life-saving resources.

FEMAMA cancer advocates meeting with staff at a lawmaker's office.

The afternoon finished with a presentation hosted by a representative who left a career in nursing to run for office. She spoke of the progress Brazil has made in advancing cancer awareness, screening, and treatment. Throughout the meeting, nearly half a dozen representatives and senators came by to address the gathered volunteers.

The Lobby Day participants beamed as their legislators thanked them for inviting them to the event and shared their commitment to fighting cancer.

We finished the day with a celebration dinner and by asking the group to share their experiences at Brazil’s Capitol. I will never forget the words of one participant:

“I learned today that voting is just a small part of my responsibility as a citizen. I learned the importance of coming where our representatives are and taking the fight against cancer to them…”

And whether it’s in Washington, DC, a state capital, or in Brasilia, isn’t that what Lobby Day is all about? 

As a volunteer representing ACS CAN ambassadors, I’d shared in my talk that I will soon have a Brazilian grandson – and that I had joined their fight because I don’t want him to ever hear the words, “You have cancer" in any language.

As Lobby Day Brasiliero ended, I reflected on the passion, dedication, and sheer determination I’d seen in FEMAMA, its partners, and volunteers. I knew that I’d bring back with me a renewed passion for advocacy and a new hope that the amazing women I met will create a future with less cancer and more birthdays for Brazil – and for my grandchildren who will live there.

(More photos of the event can be found at:  http://www.femama.org.br/novo/fotos-detalhe.php?menu=fot&id=65)

 

Fighting Breast Cancer Worldwide

The US National Breast Cancer Awareness Month provides the American Cancer Society the opportunity to talk about the breast cancer burden from not only a domestic perspective, but a global perspective as well. We know and understand that cancer has no geographical boundaries.  Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in women worldwide. 

An estimated 1.4 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer and 458,400 women died from breast cancer in 2008, despite the fact that many cases can be successfully treated when detected early. These death rates are climbing in many developing countries due to lack of access to affordable treatment and early detection. The five-year relative survival rates for breast cancer are as low as 12 percent in some low-income countries.

“Women’s health, fighting specifically breast and cervical cancers, is a cause we are dedicated to at the American Cancer Society,” said Ann McMikel, American Cancer Society Managing Director of African Cancer Control and Global Health Planning. “We are working to build lasting partnerships with nongovernmental organizations, political leaders and funders around the world to support our global grassroots network  with the advocacy tools and resources they need to help make the greatest impacton this disease.”

Dr. Olufunmilayo Olopade with First Lady of South Africa Madam Tobeka Zuma at the American Cancer Society's session on women and cancer organized on the sidelines of the UN High-level meeting on Noncommunicable Diseases in New York last year.

To address the cancer burden in Africa and its unique impact on women, the American Cancer Society partners with a coalition of regional leaders, including health ministers, health workers, cancer advocates, and journalists, to raise global awareness about women’s cancers and promote policies that advance the fight against this disease. Through its successful capacity-building programs in Africa during the past 10 years, the Society has mobilized more than 150 civil society leaders from 15 countries and formed a powerful Africa Cancer Ambassadors Network that focuses on supporting policy-driven action and raising cancer awareness in the region. The Society also works with outstanding leaders, such as Olufunmilayo Olopade, M.B., B.S., F.A.C.P., of Chicago, in the field of US and global breast cancer research.  Dr. Olopade, a recipient of the Society’s Distinguished Service Award, has examined the  BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations in diverse populations. Her laboratory was the first to describe recurrent BRCA1 mutations in extended African American families with breast cancer, a study she has extended to the founder population of African Americans in West Africa.

Launch of the Latin American Women's Cancers Advocacy Coalition (ULACCAM) in Argentina this year.

 In Latin America, the Society is creating high-level programs with ministries of health, patient-focused organizations, and the media to increase the national ability to address cancer as a complex disease with unique requirements for health systems. The Society has trained and partnered with more than 100 organizations and 1,000 advocates working in cervical and breast cancer in the region, and chairs the Latin America Advocacy Coalition on Women’s Cancers. These partnerships  empower local civil societies to demand more effective cancer control policies, facilitate work with governments in Latin America to improve access to lifesaving services for low-income women, and engage the media to destigmatize cancer by amplifying the voice of the cancer survivor.

Focusing on fighting these cancers is a priority for the American Cancer Society, not only because they affect so many women, but also because proven prevention, screening, and treatment options exist.