I am sitting in my office looking out the window at softly falling snow. The cold temperatures of winter have settled in. It is a great day to reflect while sipping on a cup of warm tea after a week at the conference followed by a week spent with family. It is a strong finish wrapping up 2022 and patient advocacy in San Antonio.
Patient Advocacy Focus at SABCS
The hashtag #SABCS2022 was seen on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn during the first week of December. This was my third time attending the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium conference. I was an active part of the Alamo Breast Cancer Foundation (ABCF) Patient Advocacy Program this year. It required a great deal of planning and preparation.
The first year I attended in 2016 I was a newbie. I wasn’t even sure if I should be attending after just opening my nonprofit organization, DiepCFoundation. The ABCF realized I was a new advocate and took me under their wings. I was encouraged to apply for Project LEAD, a science training program for advocates. In the summer of 2017, I attended.
The following December, I returned to the SABCS for the second time. After attending virtually during the pandemic, it was time to be back in person. If the third time is a charm, this year, 2022, was the icing on the cake for me. I felt the robustness of the patient advocacy group the minute I arrived on Monday evening, December 5. I left the snow of Seattle and arrived at warm, humid days in San Antonio.
The Changes in Patient Advocacy I Witnessed
I saw friends from the past, finally met in person social media friends I follow, and also met some new patient advocates doing a variety of amazing advocacy in their communities. Since last attending in person in 2017, I was exhilarated by the work I witnessed being done in the metastatic and black community. They have come on strong and it was joyful to meet members in these spaces.
I enjoyed chatting and walking with Abigail Johnson who writes the “No Half Measures” blog about living her life with metastatic breast cancer. Meeting one of my Seattle peeps, Gwen Manchion at the Chrysalis Initiative program one evening was inspiring beyond measure. A couple of days later, I met the other presenter at this event, Shonte Drakeford. Shonte and I decided to take breast cancer off the table for a while and discussed our interest in organic gardening. A dear friend, Roberta Albany, a DiepCFoundation advisory board member, and Founder of Cancer in the Know, took time out to do a Facebook Live video encouraging others to consider work as a patient advocate.
How Can you Become a Patient Advocate?
This is a list of organizations with links and where you can find them on social media. This will allow you to follow, message, or inquire about their work, especially if it might help your breast cancer or breast reconstruction Journey. I will be listing them on my resources page on this blog post in the coming weeks. Perhaps you can think about your own advocacy work by checking out these individuals and organizations.
- Paige Previvor: Co-Founder of The Breasties
- Pink Lemonade Project
- Virginia Breast Cancer Foundation
- Julia Maués and the GRASP program that began at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
- Gil Morgan, MD of the OncoAlert Network
- Veronica Saenz Laurel and Marissa Thomas of For the Breast of Us.
This is certainly not a complete list, but it is folks I had time to make a direct connection with while I attended SABCS. I also want to add information from the National Cancer Institute. We attended daily sessions that were thoughtfully put together by the Alamo Breast Cancer Foundation. The following information was from one session.