Joan Venticinque: As a breast cancer advocate,
there are many things that I do.
I do work as I said with the research advocacy
program at Bay Area Cancer Connections where
we worked directly with researchers on their
grants and helping them get funded.
I also work with the Breast Science Advocacy
Core with university of San Francisco and
as advocate for UCSF, I also worked with those
researches on their projects.
I am also the community member that sits on
the Stanford Scientific Review Committee,
so we meet twice a month and we review all
the clinical trials for Stanford and Lucile
Packard Hospitals and then another activity
I do is through the National Patient Advocate
Foundation, I am president of its counsel
member where I worked on regulatory and law
and getting bills pass that would benefit
cancer patient, not just cancer patients,
but any patients in the United States, so
I worked both at my state level and at the
federal level and one example of that would
be I worked very hard for the last five years
to get Oral IV Chemo Parity passed in the
State of California and we did it this past
year and is taking affect this January 2015,
so I am very proud of that, so that’s a
lot especially for someone who is just thinking
about getting into the advocacy, but the way
I started was by advocating for myself as
a patient.
I learned that I really needed to understand
what the doctors were telling me about my
own diagnosis and to make the best decision
about that information for myself, so I started
with myself and then after I got through my
treatment, I realized that I wanted to be
involved in helping other people and being
part of the solution to breast cancer, so
then I move on to getting scientific training
through the National Breast Cancer Coalition
Project LEAD and after that I started doing
grant reviewing for the Department of Defence
and it is just sort of snowball from there,
so I learned that even though my background
is not science that I was very interested
in it and I found it all very exciting and
having the collaborations with scientist and
researchers was also incredibly satisfying.
Dr. Michael Alvarado: Did you know that not
every breast cancer patient needs chemotherapy?
In fact today, there is a way to identify
whether or not you would benefit from that
chemotherapy based on the biology of your
tumor.
To learn more about the Oncotype DX assay
and how to discuss the results with your physician,
just press this button.
