Why are black women more likely to be diagnosed younger, and with more virulent cancers? Why is cancer treatment still so brutal? At what age should women get access to preventative care? These are some of the important issues surrounding those of us at risk or whose lives have been touched by breast cancer. Host Amanda de Cadenet is joined by the internationally renowned breast surgeon and researcher Dr. Lisa A. Newman to discuss her cutting edge research, debunk the myths, (can the type of bra you wear increase your risk of cancer?!) and the surprising TV show that inspired Dr. Newman to pursue medicine as a career. ? ). During their talk, Amanda and Dr. Newman share their own personal cancer scares and their loss of loved ones. It’s not often a voice can save a life but this episode of VS Voices is definitely one of them.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, I'm amandad Acadinet and welcome to VS Voices, an
original podcast from Victoria's Secret and I Heart Media. My
guest today is a trailblazing voice in the world of
cancer treatment. Her name is Dr Lisa Newman. She's an
oncologist and chief breast surgeon at New York Presbyterian while
Cornell Medical Center in New York City. Lisa's research has
(00:20):
taken her to the continent of Africa to better understand
breast cancer and why it's so disproportionately affects African American women.
It's one of the reasons why Dr Newman received an
award this year from Victoria's Secrets Global Fund for Women's Cancer.
A small but important reminder for all of you listening today.
All recommendations and resources provided here are for informational purposes
(00:42):
only and are not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis,
or treatment. Individuals looking to assess their personal cancer risks,
screening needs, and treatment options should directly consult with a
healthcare professional. You know, one of the phrases that I
use of my kids a law is like, I mean,
how important is It's not like a life or death situation,
(01:05):
is it? And then I was thinking, I'm talking to
you today, and you know you're probably dealing with some
kind of life or death situation, but you've taken the
time out to talk to me. So I really appreciate it.
That's that's kind of you know, any opportunity to chat
about rest health awareness. And I appreciate you guys having
an interest in getting the word out there and using
(01:26):
your leverage to to educate women. Yeah. Of course, of course,
so many people that I know are affected by somebody
that they love or one or two degrees removed a
subject that that I personally am really interested in. And actually,
(01:46):
over the pandemic, I had a sort of undiagnosed lump
that I found and went through the process of having
that screened and having um multiple whole tests and procedures
and everything done to find out that actually it was benign.
(02:06):
But you know it, it was suddenly like, oh, I
could be affected by this, this could happen to me,
And I realized how uneducated I was. And I'm someone
who I considered to be some more educated about health,
and I realized I know so little, and so I'm
really grateful to have the opportunity to talk to you. Absolutely.
(02:27):
I know that's a very, very scary experience, having to
go through that entire work up, and I'm so glad
that everything turned out well for you. But I'm also
glad that you had a chance to witness firsthand how
advance we've becoming being able to evaluate breast problems thoroughly.
In the past, you know, many breast cancers went undiagnosed
(02:49):
for a long time because we didn't have the imaging
sophistication that we have today. And today we have so
many studies that are available well to us to get
better characterization of a breast problem and make a much
more thoughtful uh way of getting to the point where
we know whether or not a biopsy is necessary. If
(03:11):
a biopsy is necessary, we are able to diagnose cancers
at earlier stages, and we have much better treatments for
them than we had in the past. We've come truly
such a long way. And correct me if I'm wrong,
but early detection seems to be key. Correct. Yes, that
is absolutely true. We've learned a lot about the heterogeneity
(03:36):
of breast cancers. It's not just one disease. There are
many different subtypes of breast cancers, some of them being
much more aggressive than others. But for any of these
breast cancers, catching it early is really one of our
greatest strategies and being able to treat that cancer effectively.
(03:57):
If you catch a breast cancer early, which means catching
it at a small size when it has it's less
likely to have traveled into the lymph nodes or the
glands of the underarm, it makes it more likely that
a woman will have a broader array of surgical options
and the smaller breast cancers don't have to be treated
(04:18):
by mistectomy surgery. We can treat women with breast saving
operations for women that do need to undergo mistectomy or
for women that prefer mis tectony, and there are some
women who do have that preference, we have wonderful breast
reconstruction options that we can offer women. Usually that breast
reconstruction is done right at the same time as the mistectomy,
(04:41):
and today we can usually do procedures called nipples saving
mistectomies I've heard about that, yeah, which work out beautiful
for the majority of cases. We basically saved the entire
breast skin envelope and then the plastic surgeon fills in
that shell of the remaining breasts skin with whatever reconstruction
(05:01):
the patient chose, so we can result in a you know,
a fabulous result cosmetically for the patient. What is the
barrier to entry for women going in and getting regular
checks done? Because I did hear that there was some
talk of lowering the age of mammograms from fifty to forty.
(05:23):
What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, well, now you
are absolutely correct. There is a tremendous amount of ongoing
debate actually regarding the optimal age at which a woman
should initiate screening mammogram, and a lot of that debate
here in the United States focuses on average risk women.
(05:43):
So we're talking about women that don't have strong family
histories or definite genetic predisposition. For those women, we know
that they have to start their breast cancer screening with
mammogram ultrasound sometimes pressed m r I at younger ages.
But for like, what age? What age would you say?
So the rule of thumb that we often use in
(06:05):
women that have a strong family history of breast cancer
is that they should start getting their screening mamograms five
to ten years younger than the youngest age of breast
cancer diagnosis, if they have relatives diagnosed at age forty
or younger. For the average risk women, the general population
of women, UH, there has been for many, many decades
(06:29):
we advocated in favor of women getting their namograms starting
at age forty and continuing yearly thereafter. Seed. That's great
to know because it's a misconception that at age fifty
when you ask a lot of women, what is smograms?
Where the yeah. That comes from the United States Preventive
(06:50):
Services Test Force that began a recommendation a few years
ago stating that faith forty was safe for women to
delay initiation of screening mammograms until they reach age fifty. Now,
there is a cost to that recommendation. If all average
risk American women wait until they reach age fifty, you
(07:13):
are going to miss some breast cancers and you are
going to have more deaths from breast cancer. Starting mammograms
at age forty means that you are investing as a
population in the expense of doing mammograms in all of
those women at younger ages, and it means that some
women will have false alarms along the way where they
(07:36):
are found to have an abnormal mammogram that then needs
to be further evaluated, perhaps with a biopsy. So currently
there is a tremendous controversy here in the United States
regarding the age of which women should strike their mammograms.
What would you say, Yeah, so, I strongly support the
recommendations of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network and the American
(08:00):
Society of Breast Surgeons. We all advocate very strongly that
women in the United States should start their mammograms at
age forty and continue yearly thereafter. Okay, that is good.
We have huarded from one of the most reliable sources
in the world on breast cancer, so that's really good
to know. Now you talked about average risk American women,
(08:22):
that is, excluding African American women who are disproportionately affected
by breast cancer. Why is that the case. African American
women are more likely to get breast cancer with different characteristics.
We are more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer
at younger ages, we are more likely to be a
(08:43):
diagnosed with biologically aggressive patterns of breast cancer, and we're
more likely to be diagnosed with cancers that are bigger,
bulkier at the time that they are found. Now because
of the fact that African American women are more likely
to be diagnosed with breast cancer at younger ages. This
(09:03):
is another reason why I and many of my colleagues
so strongly advocate in favor of women getting those mammograms
at age starting at age forty, because of all women
in the United States, wait until they reach age fifty,
You're gonna magnify the disparities that already exist in terms
of breast cancer mortality between Black women and white women,
(09:24):
because that will mean so many more Black women will
be getting their biologically aggressive breast cancers diagnosed even later.
And African American women, we represent a population of women
that are already more likely to get breast cancer in
pre menopausal ages. Now why this is the case that
(09:44):
we see disparities and breast cancer burden with Black women
getting more aggressive cancers and cancers at younger ages. This
is also an area of active research. My own research
involves looking at the genetics of African answer history and
trying to sort out some of the hereditary markers related
to African ancestry that are linked to the development of
(10:08):
breast cancer at early ages. And by studying the breast
cancer burden not only of Black women compared to white
women here in America, but by also studying the breast
cancer burden of women on the continent of Africa, we
actually have been able to identify some of the hereditary
markers that are linked to getting breast cancer at younger age.
(10:31):
You've got a lot of breast cancers. You've done a
lot of work studying breast cancer patients in Ghana, Yes,
and you mentioned your research there and that that had
been very insightful and helpful for understanding what those markas. Uh,
how have you been able to apply that knowledge to
treating women in the US. Yeah, So what we have
(10:55):
learned is that Western Sub Saharan African ancestry is the
link to the patterns of breast cancer that we see
in Black women, the biologically aggressive cancers that we referred
to as triple negative breast cancers which afflict us at
younger ages. And if you look at women on the
(11:17):
continent of Africa, we see quite high rates of these
triple negative breast cancers in Western Africa, which is where
Ghana is located compared to East Africa. And we also
do work in the Peolpia located on the eastern coast
of Africa. So this points to the fact that our
western sub Saharan African heritage is what's putting us at
(11:38):
risk for these types of breast cancers, which makes sense
when you look back to the slave trade of several
hundred years ago. The trans Atlantic slave trade brought the
ancestors of contemporary West Africans contemporary Gaineans across the ocean
to serve as slaves. So we have a lot of
shared ancestry as African Americans with contemporary Gaineians. And by
(11:59):
doing genetic studies of African Americans, West Africans, and East Africans,
we've identified particular genetic markers that are likely related to
the genetic variants that were acquired in Africa as part
of evolution really to develop resistance against malaria, which is
(12:20):
a very deadly disease and of Africa. So the work
that we are currently doing is connecting the dusts between
some of these genetic markers that are linked to malaria
resistance and their effects on the mammary tissue by affecting
the memory the breast tissue immune micro environment and causing
(12:43):
that the breast kit tissue of it to be more
likely to develop these particular patterns of breast cancer. So
it sounds like and from what I've read, and you've
spoken about the incredible advances that the medical end Stree
has made, not only with testing but also with research,
(13:04):
some of which you've mentioned, how is it possible that
with all this progress, we still don't have a cure
per se, or even have preventative measures. Because even with
this information, and again I am not educated about this,
so I'm asking you, based on my own curiosity, why
(13:27):
do we not have things we can do to help
prevent breast cancer with all this great testing, with all
this great research, And how far away do you think
we are from actually being able to get some of
that insight and apply it to preventative measures. Yeah. Well,
first of all, you sound extremely knowledgeable, so you've clearly
done your I've researched, you definitely know what you're talking about.
(13:50):
It's a pleasure to discuss these these issues with you. Now.
It's true that we don't have the magic bullet to
cure breast care swer tragically, and we don't have any
perfect strategy for preventing breast cancer, but we do have
some strategies that are effective in reducing our chances of
(14:12):
getting breast cancer. Number one, we know that women who
nurse their babies will lower their risk of getting breast
cancer women, especially women in the post menopausal age ranges,
if they keep their weight under control, if they avoid obesity,
if they stay active with a healthy exercise regiment, and
follow a healthy, balanced diet, that's another strategy for lowering
(14:34):
breast cancer risk. Sorry, I want to just pouse you
right there. Keeping weight lower post menopausal and maintaining exercise
is a contributing factor to diminishing the risk of breast cancer.
How is that so? Yeah, Well, obesity, especially in post
(14:55):
menopausal women, is going to be linked to estrogen level
holes and it's going to be linked to some hormones
that can accelerate the carcinogenic patterns of the breast tissue.
So that's probably the mechanism. There may be other mechanisms,
but that's the the working hypothesis at this point. I
(15:17):
want to ask you about something that I'm sure is
quite controversial, but what about underwired bras? Because I've also
heard some people say doesn't make a difference whether you
wear an underwire bra at all, And then I've also
spoken to people who said, no, no no, there's actually substantial
data that shows that wearing and underwire bra can disrupt
(15:40):
something in the breast tissue and the glands that cannot know. Okay,
just worry about the type of zier. Women to just
wear whatever rasier is comfortable for them and supportive. That
will not influence breast cancer risk. But other things that
women can do to lower breast cancer risk over the
lifetime would be avoiding out ahol intake in excess. Now,
(16:02):
there are some cardiovascular benefits to having a little bit
of alcohol here and there, especially red wine, but you
want to be balanced, So avoiding excess alcohol will lower
breast cancer risk. Why what does excess alcohol do to
increase the risk? Somehow, the alcoholic content must alter the
(16:24):
hormonal balance of our bodies, and it's been very clearly
demonstrated that um linear increases in alcohol intake will result
in a linear increase in breast cancer risk. Now, there
are also medications that women can take to lower breast
cancer risk. These medications do have side effects, however, and
(16:47):
so we don't recommend them to women unless the women
is at clearly higher risk of developing breast cancer. So
women who have who women to know their family history
because family history and evidence of hereditary susceptibility for breast
cancer might make you a candidate to take one of
these medications. Women that have had passed a benign breast
(17:10):
biopsies should know exactly what was in that benign breast
biopsy because there are some breast biopsies that show all
patterns of overactive breast tissue, and women with these overactive
breast tissues are also at higher risk for getting breast cancer,
and they are candidates for taking these medications that can
lower their future risks. These are great questions because as
(17:34):
someone who did you know, have to do as you
said of work up to find that the lump that
was found in my breast was benign, I didn't know
those questions to ask. You know, you're just like, oh,
I'm fine, thank god, great. Yeah, You've just given me
some more questions to go back and ask. This is
really helpful. Yeah, definitely very important to make sure that
(17:55):
you know your detailed breast biopsy history or your family history. Uh,
useful information to protect yourself. Now, Lisa, you obviously spent
a lot of time doing research, but you also are
a surgeon, and I'm and I wanted to just go
back to something that you mentioned at the beginning of
(18:16):
our conversation, which is that we've made incredible advancement in
the way messectomies are done. And this is a question
I had for you. I have um seen multiple women
who have had missectomees, and all of the scarring that
I've seen has been brutal. And one girlfriend of mine
(18:39):
had a double messectomy, and I was so curious why,
given the sophistication of plastic surgeons and how they work,
that her scarring was. I mean, it was so overwhelming
just for me as her friend to see it, but
for her to look at every day, it was it
was very extreme scar and I'm and I'm wondering why
(19:03):
it is that messectomy is often have a very harsh
scar and why we aren't able to change that. H Well,
I'm sorry that your friend did not have the best
cosmetic outcome. That's unfortunate, but she should certainly continue with
being evaluated by her own plastic surgeon or a different
(19:26):
plastic surgeon, because there are several ways that a suboptimal
cosmetic outcome can be revised and give her the appearance
that she would like to have. Uh. Sometimes the reconstruction
result is affected by the extent of the woman's cancer,
and sometimes the cosmetic result is affected by other types
(19:49):
of breast cancer treatments that the woman requires. For example,
some of the more advanced breast cancers that require rostectomy
surgery will also require radiation at to the mystectomy, and
radiation can definitely have an adverse effect on the reconstruction appearance.
But again there are things that the plastic surgeons can
(20:09):
do to revise the appearance and to restore the symmetry
and give a better result. I also strongly encourage women
diagnosed with breast cancer to make sure that they seek
treatment in a dedicated breast oncology program where they can
avail themselves of the services of people who do nothing
(20:30):
but take care of breast cancer all the time, because
that will be an advantage in terms of making sure
that you're getting all of the best options that are
out there. The women who took care of me and
I I'm just, like, you know, one of hundreds of
thousands of women who just got my regular breast check
(20:53):
up and needed follow up with it. But they were
so kind, and they were so considerate, and they were
so gentle, and um, I was thinking about how it
was for them to have to work with people who
had way more serious diagnosis than me just getting a checkup,
And I wonder how that is for you, having to
(21:13):
tell so many people that they have breast cancer. How
do you prepare for that conversation and to hold the
space for the people who you're giving that information too. Yeah,
that is definitely a very difficult, emotionally charged conversation to have,
(21:35):
There's no doubt about it, and it's painful for everybody involved,
most of all the patients of course. However, one of
the really great things about my profession, and one of
the things that makes it so incredibly rewarding to me,
is that the majority of breast cancer patients will have
a good outcome, and so it's very uh abolutely it's
(22:00):
rewarding that I can look a woman in the eye
when I am discussing her new breast cancer diagnosis and
tell her that we do have the tools to help
her beat this cancer. Going through the treatment is never easy,
that is for sure, but it is absolutely worthwhile. Mm hmm.
I want to talk a little bit about why you
(22:24):
chose this profession. I read that you grew up watching
a general hospital. Was that your inspect I did, Yeah,
this is obviously going back a long long time. The
young people like you don't even know what soap operas are.
I guess I don't know what general hospital is, but
I did when I read it, So that you grew
(22:46):
up on it, is that, like, what inspired you to
choose this as a profession? Yeah? Well, Um, growing up
after school, one of the ways that my mom and
I bonded was that we would watch this so papera
general Hospital every afternoon, and I just thought that being
a physician looked really cool and exciting, and the female
(23:09):
physician on the show just looked like she had a
great life. So that was my initial spark as a
black woman. UM. In the case remains where many black
families today, we don't have a lot of medical professionals
in our extended families. That's just the reality of African
(23:31):
Americans in the United States, and so we do tend
to get our um inspiration or exposure to healthcare professions
from a typical sources. We don't get it from our
uncles or aunts or grandparents who are physicians, so television
is sometimes that exposure for us. So that's how I
(23:53):
became intrigued by medicine as a career. My interest in
becoming a dead ca did dreast surgical oncologist, however, evolved
many many years later after I had already been a physician,
and in the first phase of my career as a
physician and as a surgeon, I worked as a general
(24:14):
surgeon in Brooklyn, which meant that I was taking care
of a whole variety of different surgical problems, emergency room
surgeries for trauma, UH, benign and malignant surgical problems like
gall bladder operations, appendectomies. But I was also taking care
of a lot of cancers. And as a woman, many
(24:35):
women in my community did gravitate towards me because they
wanted to have a woman physician taking care of their
breast problems. And in Brooklyn, this is going back now
to the nineteen nineties. I just became very intrigued by
seeing this repeated pattern of my black breast cancer patients
being diagnosed at strikingly young ages and having the bulkier,
(24:59):
more challenging tumors, and so I wanted to become involved
with research to try to address the the answers to
those questions of why this was the case. And that's
what what motivated me to pursue a career in academic
surgical breast oncologist oncology. So I did fellowship training in
surgical oncology and my career has been devoted to breast
(25:20):
answer management ever since. Thank you for the dedication that
you have in the time and the research and the
insight that you've given to this specific issue. In interviews,
you describe a lot of healthcare disparities that black women face,
and this is something that we know but not widely.
(25:44):
How much of this is a problem which you would
consider medical versus political, social, or economic. Yeah, it's definitely
a combination of the two and the two different aspects
of the definition of racial ethnic identity, race as a
socio political construct versus race as a true genetic biologic entity.
(26:11):
They're really not mutually exclusive. And it is true that
because of systemic racism over the past. You know several
hundred years and uh in in North America that African
Americans have higher rates of poverty. We are more likely
to live in communities that have horror public school systems,
(26:34):
and that has downstream effect on higher education prospects, on
employment prospects. All of those things play in together such
that African Americans have poorer access to health care and
a whole host of adverse health issues. So racial ethnic
(26:55):
identity definitely is a socio political construct. How society layables us,
how we identify ourselves influences how we live, where we live,
and how we access healthcare. But racial ethnic identity is
also associated with some of the ancestral genetics that we
discussed previously, and some of these ancestral genetics related to
(27:19):
African ancestry, in this case in the setting of breast
cancer the relevance of Western sub Saharan African ancestry. These
genetics also play a role in cancer and in particular
breast cancer biology. So it really both aspects of race
need to be addressed comprehensively when we're trying to understand
(27:40):
breast cancer disparities. According to the Association of American American
Medical Colleges, only five percent of physicians in this country
a Black or African American. I'm wondering if you have
a point of view of how we can begin to
change that, because as you said you became interested in
this work as a woman of color who was treating
(28:03):
women of color and understanding that they're that that connection. However,
if there are not only five of physicians are black
African American, there's a huge gap there. Yeah, and it's
a tragic gap. It's tragic for many reasons. Um We
(28:24):
there are data showing that physicians of color are more
likely to gravitate towards diverse practices where they are caring
for more diverse patients. There are abundant data indicating that
patients of color want to have the physicians that reflect
their own background. And in general, I think that all patients,
(28:47):
regardless of their own racial ethnic identity, they will feel
more trusting of a healthcare workforce that reflects their community.
Of a very homogeneous group of physicians and a diverse
patient population, that mismatch is going to result in suboptimal
communication between physicians and patients, and that's never good. It's
(29:11):
also true that if we continue with a very uniform,
homogeneous physician profile, with the bulk of those physicians being
white males, then we're missing a whole pool of talent
and brilliance in the diverse population of young people and
(29:31):
talent and creativity that we could be tapping into so
that we have a stronger and even more powerful physician
workforce and oncology workforce research workforce. We are cutting off
our noses despite our face if we don't wrap our
arms in on this problem and improve the diversity of
(29:52):
our workforce. And I realized that that's not an easy
problem to tackle. There are a lot of u social
societal ills that need to be corrected in order for
us to take care of the pipeline problem that exists,
But it is something that we we have an obligation
(30:12):
to work on. Pipeline programs where we encourage young people
at the great school level, the high school level, college
level to get them interested in healthcare so that they
aren't necessarily relying on television to be exposed to the
medical professions and to the sciences. These pipeline programs are
(30:33):
things that we can do right now to engage more
young people in pursuing healthcare professions. A lot of the
people look at us and just say that since the
physicians don't reflect their own communities, they have less of
an interest in in pursuing that profession. It makes sense
and also so important that somebody like yourself is visible, because,
(31:00):
as we know, many people have said they cannot be
something that they cannot see. And for you to be
visible with the work that you do, you are you're
creating a path that did not exist previously, which is
my definition of a trailblazer, and that you're creating a
(31:21):
path for other women of color and women to look
at you and say, hey, I want to do this,
I'm interested in this, I care about this. If she
can do it, I can do it. Well, thank you
so much for those comments. I certainly hope that I
can serve in the role of being um somebody that
that inspires the young people of color to pursue healthcare
(31:45):
oncology as a profession. And I can honestly tell all
the young people that I encounter that this is a
great profession. It is very noble and it's exciting and
I wake up every day feeling that I'm going to
the best job in the world. During your career or
even as you were growing up, who were the voices
(32:07):
that you look to that inspired you to become the
woman that you are today? Well, oh boy, there are
so many strong, incredibly brilliant women out there. UM, in
my own circle of course, my mother, my sister who
tragically just passed away from triple negative breast cancer, UM
(32:30):
a couple of months ago. I'm sorry, huge role models
for me and tremendous sources of inspiration and support. UM.
Surely Chisholm another trail blazer in American politics. Uh. More
contemporary Opra Winfrey, of course, who isn't inspired by Oprah Winfrey? Uh?
(32:53):
Tina Turner in the music industry. Another incredibly strong, powerful women.
There are so any women out there in all walks
of life showing that we are strong, powerful, creative, and
we know how to get get the job done. Lisa,
I'm sorry to hear about your sister and her recent passing.
(33:16):
Would you be comfortable if I asked you a question
about what that experience was like for you? Sure? Yeah,
that's that's totally fine. In many ways, I still feel
is though, UM. An opportunity to to talk about it
is part of the healing. So obviously, treating being having
(33:42):
the knowledge and the experience you have with treating women
with breast cancer. What was that experience like for you
when your sister was diagnosed? It was just nothing less
than horrific, and my sister's experience with cancer was particularly
(34:02):
um dramatic and devastating. She was quite suddenly diagnosed with
widely metastatic triple negative breast cancer, and it actually made
itself apparent because of neurologic symptoms from brain involvement. My
sister was a brilliant, brilliant woman. She was and a
(34:26):
federal prosecutor, had a very very high powered job. And
then several years ago when she stepped down from working
as a federal prosecutor because she wanted to help take
care of my mom, by the way, you had a
spear stroke at the time. But when she stepped down
from being a US prosecutor, she took on a whole
new the profession of being a school's a teacher in
(34:49):
the New York City public school system, teaching troubled high
school kids. And she was doing this job every day
right up until the time that she was diagnosed. And
then it's just like overnight, she so it displayed these
neurologic symptoms and within a day and a half she
(35:10):
um was completely uptended and the cancer was widely metastatic.
And yeah, I'm so sorry that must have two and
a half months, two and a half months. I'm so sorry.
So these are the types of breast cancers that we
(35:33):
have to We have to get rid of all breast
cancers as a threat to women, but these particularly virulent
ones that hit black women disproportionately. We we have to
get control of this. Thank you so much for taking
the time to speak with me. Thank you for sharing
(35:55):
all this incredible insight and wisdom and tool us, and
and thank you for sharing the story about your own sister.
I greatly appreciate that, and I'm really pleased we got
to talk. And I hope we can support the incredible
research and work that you continue to do. Thank you
(36:19):
so very much. Debbie was such an giving person and
she was actually always very supportive of my research, so
I know that she would want your story to be
used in a positive way to educate other women, and
all of my research is in her name at this point.
(36:39):
H thank you, Thank you, Lisa, Thank you so much
for your time. This has been wonderful, wonderful to talk
with you. You have been listening to VS Voices. My
thanks to today's guest, Dr Lisa Newman. If you love
our show, please comment, like, and subscribe to wherever you
listen to your favorite podcasts, and as always, please follow
(37:01):
me Amandate Acadeney on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. As part
of Victoria's Secrets ongoing commitment to become one of the
world's leading advocates for women, their partnership with Pelotonia and
a a c R is enabling them to support a
new generation of female scientists in the field of cancer research.
Building on the twenty one million already raised to support
(37:24):
this work, this year, VS have announced five scholarships of
a hundred thousand dollars each to be awarded directly to
five female cancer researchers every year. The work of today's
trailblazing guest doctor Lisa Newman is supported in part by
Victoria's Secrets Global Fund for Women's Cancers. Thank you for listening.
Hello, I'm amandad Acadinet and welcome to VS Voices, an
original podcast from Victoria's Secret and I Heart Media. My
guest today is a trailblazing voice in the world of
cancer treatment. Her name is Dr Lisa Newman. She's an
oncologist and chief breast surgeon at New York Presbyterian while
Cornell Medical Center in New York City. Lisa's research has
(00:20):
taken her to the continent of Africa to better understand
breast cancer and why it's so disproportionately affects African American women.
It's one of the reasons why Dr Newman received an
award this year from Victoria's Secrets Global Fund for Women's Cancer.
A small but important reminder for all of you listening today.
All recommendations and resources provided here are for informational purposes
(00:42):
only and are not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis,
or treatment. Individuals looking to assess their personal cancer risks,
screening needs, and treatment options should directly consult with a
healthcare professional. You know, one of the phrases that I
use of my kids a law is like, I mean,
how important is It's not like a life or death situation,
(01:05):
is it? And then I was thinking, I'm talking to
you today, and you know you're probably dealing with some
kind of life or death situation, but you've taken the
time out to talk to me. So I really appreciate it.
That's that's kind of you know, any opportunity to chat
about rest health awareness. And I appreciate you guys having
an interest in getting the word out there and using
(01:26):
your leverage to to educate women. Yeah. Of course, of course,
so many people that I know are affected by somebody
that they love or one or two degrees removed a
subject that that I personally am really interested in. And actually,
(01:46):
over the pandemic, I had a sort of undiagnosed lump
that I found and went through the process of having
that screened and having um multiple whole tests and procedures
and everything done to find out that actually it was benign.
(02:06):
But you know it, it was suddenly like, oh, I
could be affected by this, this could happen to me,
And I realized how uneducated I was. And I'm someone
who I considered to be some more educated about health,
and I realized I know so little, and so I'm
really grateful to have the opportunity to talk to you. Absolutely.
(02:27):
I know that's a very, very scary experience, having to
go through that entire work up, and I'm so glad
that everything turned out well for you. But I'm also
glad that you had a chance to witness firsthand how
advance we've becoming being able to evaluate breast problems thoroughly.
In the past, you know, many breast cancers went undiagnosed
(02:49):
for a long time because we didn't have the imaging
sophistication that we have today. And today we have so
many studies that are available well to us to get
better characterization of a breast problem and make a much
more thoughtful uh way of getting to the point where
we know whether or not a biopsy is necessary. If
(03:11):
a biopsy is necessary, we are able to diagnose cancers
at earlier stages, and we have much better treatments for
them than we had in the past. We've come truly
such a long way. And correct me if I'm wrong,
but early detection seems to be key. Correct. Yes, that
is absolutely true. We've learned a lot about the heterogeneity
(03:36):
of breast cancers. It's not just one disease. There are
many different subtypes of breast cancers, some of them being
much more aggressive than others. But for any of these
breast cancers, catching it early is really one of our
greatest strategies and being able to treat that cancer effectively.
(03:57):
If you catch a breast cancer early, which means catching
it at a small size when it has it's less
likely to have traveled into the lymph nodes or the
glands of the underarm, it makes it more likely that
a woman will have a broader array of surgical options
and the smaller breast cancers don't have to be treated
(04:18):
by mistectomy surgery. We can treat women with breast saving
operations for women that do need to undergo mistectomy or
for women that prefer mis tectony, and there are some
women who do have that preference, we have wonderful breast
reconstruction options that we can offer women. Usually that breast
reconstruction is done right at the same time as the mistectomy,
(04:41):
and today we can usually do procedures called nipples saving
mistectomies I've heard about that, yeah, which work out beautiful
for the majority of cases. We basically saved the entire
breast skin envelope and then the plastic surgeon fills in
that shell of the remaining breasts skin with whatever reconstruction
(05:01):
the patient chose, so we can result in a you know,
a fabulous result cosmetically for the patient. What is the
barrier to entry for women going in and getting regular
checks done? Because I did hear that there was some
talk of lowering the age of mammograms from fifty to forty.
(05:23):
What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, well, now you
are absolutely correct. There is a tremendous amount of ongoing
debate actually regarding the optimal age at which a woman
should initiate screening mammogram, and a lot of that debate
here in the United States focuses on average risk women.
(05:43):
So we're talking about women that don't have strong family
histories or definite genetic predisposition. For those women, we know
that they have to start their breast cancer screening with
mammogram ultrasound sometimes pressed m r I at younger ages.
But for like, what age? What age would you say?
So the rule of thumb that we often use in
(06:05):
women that have a strong family history of breast cancer
is that they should start getting their screening mamograms five
to ten years younger than the youngest age of breast
cancer diagnosis, if they have relatives diagnosed at age forty
or younger. For the average risk women, the general population
of women, UH, there has been for many, many decades
(06:29):
we advocated in favor of women getting their namograms starting
at age forty and continuing yearly thereafter. Seed. That's great
to know because it's a misconception that at age fifty
when you ask a lot of women, what is smograms?
Where the yeah. That comes from the United States Preventive
(06:50):
Services Test Force that began a recommendation a few years
ago stating that faith forty was safe for women to
delay initiation of screening mammograms until they reach age fifty. Now,
there is a cost to that recommendation. If all average
risk American women wait until they reach age fifty, you
(07:13):
are going to miss some breast cancers and you are
going to have more deaths from breast cancer. Starting mammograms
at age forty means that you are investing as a
population in the expense of doing mammograms in all of
those women at younger ages, and it means that some
women will have false alarms along the way where they
(07:36):
are found to have an abnormal mammogram that then needs
to be further evaluated, perhaps with a biopsy. So currently
there is a tremendous controversy here in the United States
regarding the age of which women should strike their mammograms.
What would you say, Yeah, so, I strongly support the
recommendations of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network and the American
(08:00):
Society of Breast Surgeons. We all advocate very strongly that
women in the United States should start their mammograms at
age forty and continue yearly thereafter. Okay, that is good.
We have huarded from one of the most reliable sources
in the world on breast cancer, so that's really good
to know. Now you talked about average risk American women,
(08:22):
that is, excluding African American women who are disproportionately affected
by breast cancer. Why is that the case. African American
women are more likely to get breast cancer with different characteristics.
We are more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer
at younger ages, we are more likely to be a
(08:43):
diagnosed with biologically aggressive patterns of breast cancer, and we're
more likely to be diagnosed with cancers that are bigger,
bulkier at the time that they are found. Now because
of the fact that African American women are more likely
to be diagnosed with breast cancer at younger ages. This
(09:03):
is another reason why I and many of my colleagues
so strongly advocate in favor of women getting those mammograms
at age starting at age forty, because of all women
in the United States, wait until they reach age fifty,
You're gonna magnify the disparities that already exist in terms
of breast cancer mortality between Black women and white women,
(09:24):
because that will mean so many more Black women will
be getting their biologically aggressive breast cancers diagnosed even later.
And African American women, we represent a population of women
that are already more likely to get breast cancer in
pre menopausal ages. Now why this is the case that
(09:44):
we see disparities and breast cancer burden with Black women
getting more aggressive cancers and cancers at younger ages. This
is also an area of active research. My own research
involves looking at the genetics of African answer history and
trying to sort out some of the hereditary markers related
to African ancestry that are linked to the development of
(10:08):
breast cancer at early ages. And by studying the breast
cancer burden not only of Black women compared to white
women here in America, but by also studying the breast
cancer burden of women on the continent of Africa, we
actually have been able to identify some of the hereditary
markers that are linked to getting breast cancer at younger age.
(10:31):
You've got a lot of breast cancers. You've done a
lot of work studying breast cancer patients in Ghana, Yes,
and you mentioned your research there and that that had
been very insightful and helpful for understanding what those markas. Uh,
how have you been able to apply that knowledge to
treating women in the US. Yeah, So what we have
(10:55):
learned is that Western Sub Saharan African ancestry is the
link to the patterns of breast cancer that we see
in Black women, the biologically aggressive cancers that we referred
to as triple negative breast cancers which afflict us at
younger ages. And if you look at women on the
(11:17):
continent of Africa, we see quite high rates of these
triple negative breast cancers in Western Africa, which is where
Ghana is located compared to East Africa. And we also
do work in the Peolpia located on the eastern coast
of Africa. So this points to the fact that our
western sub Saharan African heritage is what's putting us at
(11:38):
risk for these types of breast cancers, which makes sense
when you look back to the slave trade of several
hundred years ago. The trans Atlantic slave trade brought the
ancestors of contemporary West Africans contemporary Gaineans across the ocean
to serve as slaves. So we have a lot of
shared ancestry as African Americans with contemporary Gaineians. And by
(11:59):
doing genetic studies of African Americans, West Africans, and East Africans,
we've identified particular genetic markers that are likely related to
the genetic variants that were acquired in Africa as part
of evolution really to develop resistance against malaria, which is
(12:20):
a very deadly disease and of Africa. So the work
that we are currently doing is connecting the dusts between
some of these genetic markers that are linked to malaria
resistance and their effects on the mammary tissue by affecting
the memory the breast tissue immune micro environment and causing
(12:43):
that the breast kit tissue of it to be more
likely to develop these particular patterns of breast cancer. So
it sounds like and from what I've read, and you've
spoken about the incredible advances that the medical end Stree
has made, not only with testing but also with research,
(13:04):
some of which you've mentioned, how is it possible that
with all this progress, we still don't have a cure
per se, or even have preventative measures. Because even with
this information, and again I am not educated about this,
so I'm asking you, based on my own curiosity, why
(13:27):
do we not have things we can do to help
prevent breast cancer with all this great testing, with all
this great research, And how far away do you think
we are from actually being able to get some of
that insight and apply it to preventative measures. Yeah. Well,
first of all, you sound extremely knowledgeable, so you've clearly
done your I've researched, you definitely know what you're talking about.
(13:50):
It's a pleasure to discuss these these issues with you. Now.
It's true that we don't have the magic bullet to
cure breast care swer tragically, and we don't have any
perfect strategy for preventing breast cancer, but we do have
some strategies that are effective in reducing our chances of
(14:12):
getting breast cancer. Number one, we know that women who
nurse their babies will lower their risk of getting breast
cancer women, especially women in the post menopausal age ranges,
if they keep their weight under control, if they avoid obesity,
if they stay active with a healthy exercise regiment, and
follow a healthy, balanced diet, that's another strategy for lowering
(14:34):
breast cancer risk. Sorry, I want to just pouse you
right there. Keeping weight lower post menopausal and maintaining exercise
is a contributing factor to diminishing the risk of breast cancer.
How is that so? Yeah, Well, obesity, especially in post
(14:55):
menopausal women, is going to be linked to estrogen level
holes and it's going to be linked to some hormones
that can accelerate the carcinogenic patterns of the breast tissue.
So that's probably the mechanism. There may be other mechanisms,
but that's the the working hypothesis at this point. I
(15:17):
want to ask you about something that I'm sure is
quite controversial, but what about underwired bras? Because I've also
heard some people say doesn't make a difference whether you
wear an underwire bra at all, And then I've also
spoken to people who said, no, no no, there's actually substantial
data that shows that wearing and underwire bra can disrupt
(15:40):
something in the breast tissue and the glands that cannot know. Okay,
just worry about the type of zier. Women to just
wear whatever rasier is comfortable for them and supportive. That
will not influence breast cancer risk. But other things that
women can do to lower breast cancer risk over the
lifetime would be avoiding out ahol intake in excess. Now,
(16:02):
there are some cardiovascular benefits to having a little bit
of alcohol here and there, especially red wine, but you
want to be balanced, So avoiding excess alcohol will lower
breast cancer risk. Why what does excess alcohol do to
increase the risk? Somehow, the alcoholic content must alter the
(16:24):
hormonal balance of our bodies, and it's been very clearly
demonstrated that um linear increases in alcohol intake will result
in a linear increase in breast cancer risk. Now, there
are also medications that women can take to lower breast
cancer risk. These medications do have side effects, however, and
(16:47):
so we don't recommend them to women unless the women
is at clearly higher risk of developing breast cancer. So
women who have who women to know their family history
because family history and evidence of hereditary susceptibility for breast
cancer might make you a candidate to take one of
these medications. Women that have had passed a benign breast
(17:10):
biopsies should know exactly what was in that benign breast
biopsy because there are some breast biopsies that show all
patterns of overactive breast tissue, and women with these overactive
breast tissues are also at higher risk for getting breast cancer,
and they are candidates for taking these medications that can
lower their future risks. These are great questions because as
(17:34):
someone who did you know, have to do as you
said of work up to find that the lump that
was found in my breast was benign, I didn't know
those questions to ask. You know, you're just like, oh,
I'm fine, thank god, great. Yeah, You've just given me
some more questions to go back and ask. This is
really helpful. Yeah, definitely very important to make sure that
(17:55):
you know your detailed breast biopsy history or your family history. Uh,
useful information to protect yourself. Now, Lisa, you obviously spent
a lot of time doing research, but you also are
a surgeon, and I'm and I wanted to just go
back to something that you mentioned at the beginning of
(18:16):
our conversation, which is that we've made incredible advancement in
the way messectomies are done. And this is a question
I had for you. I have um seen multiple women
who have had missectomees, and all of the scarring that
I've seen has been brutal. And one girlfriend of mine
(18:39):
had a double messectomy, and I was so curious why,
given the sophistication of plastic surgeons and how they work,
that her scarring was. I mean, it was so overwhelming
just for me as her friend to see it, but
for her to look at every day, it was it
was very extreme scar and I'm and I'm wondering why
(19:03):
it is that messectomy is often have a very harsh
scar and why we aren't able to change that. H Well,
I'm sorry that your friend did not have the best
cosmetic outcome. That's unfortunate, but she should certainly continue with
being evaluated by her own plastic surgeon or a different
(19:26):
plastic surgeon, because there are several ways that a suboptimal
cosmetic outcome can be revised and give her the appearance
that she would like to have. Uh. Sometimes the reconstruction
result is affected by the extent of the woman's cancer,
and sometimes the cosmetic result is affected by other types
(19:49):
of breast cancer treatments that the woman requires. For example,
some of the more advanced breast cancers that require rostectomy
surgery will also require radiation at to the mystectomy, and
radiation can definitely have an adverse effect on the reconstruction appearance.
But again there are things that the plastic surgeons can
(20:09):
do to revise the appearance and to restore the symmetry
and give a better result. I also strongly encourage women
diagnosed with breast cancer to make sure that they seek
treatment in a dedicated breast oncology program where they can
avail themselves of the services of people who do nothing
(20:30):
but take care of breast cancer all the time, because
that will be an advantage in terms of making sure
that you're getting all of the best options that are
out there. The women who took care of me and
I I'm just, like, you know, one of hundreds of
thousands of women who just got my regular breast check
(20:53):
up and needed follow up with it. But they were
so kind, and they were so considerate, and they were
so gentle, and um, I was thinking about how it
was for them to have to work with people who
had way more serious diagnosis than me just getting a checkup,
And I wonder how that is for you, having to
(21:13):
tell so many people that they have breast cancer. How
do you prepare for that conversation and to hold the
space for the people who you're giving that information too. Yeah,
that is definitely a very difficult, emotionally charged conversation to have,
(21:35):
There's no doubt about it, and it's painful for everybody involved,
most of all the patients of course. However, one of
the really great things about my profession, and one of
the things that makes it so incredibly rewarding to me,
is that the majority of breast cancer patients will have
a good outcome, and so it's very uh abolutely it's
(22:00):
rewarding that I can look a woman in the eye
when I am discussing her new breast cancer diagnosis and
tell her that we do have the tools to help
her beat this cancer. Going through the treatment is never easy,
that is for sure, but it is absolutely worthwhile. Mm hmm.
I want to talk a little bit about why you
(22:24):
chose this profession. I read that you grew up watching
a general hospital. Was that your inspect I did, Yeah,
this is obviously going back a long long time. The
young people like you don't even know what soap operas are.
I guess I don't know what general hospital is, but
I did when I read it, So that you grew
(22:46):
up on it, is that, like, what inspired you to
choose this as a profession? Yeah? Well, Um, growing up
after school, one of the ways that my mom and
I bonded was that we would watch this so papera
general Hospital every afternoon, and I just thought that being
a physician looked really cool and exciting, and the female
(23:09):
physician on the show just looked like she had a
great life. So that was my initial spark as a
black woman. UM. In the case remains where many black
families today, we don't have a lot of medical professionals
in our extended families. That's just the reality of African
(23:31):
Americans in the United States, and so we do tend
to get our um inspiration or exposure to healthcare professions
from a typical sources. We don't get it from our
uncles or aunts or grandparents who are physicians, so television
is sometimes that exposure for us. So that's how I
(23:53):
became intrigued by medicine as a career. My interest in
becoming a dead ca did dreast surgical oncologist, however, evolved
many many years later after I had already been a physician,
and in the first phase of my career as a
physician and as a surgeon, I worked as a general
(24:14):
surgeon in Brooklyn, which meant that I was taking care
of a whole variety of different surgical problems, emergency room
surgeries for trauma, UH, benign and malignant surgical problems like
gall bladder operations, appendectomies. But I was also taking care
of a lot of cancers. And as a woman, many
(24:35):
women in my community did gravitate towards me because they
wanted to have a woman physician taking care of their
breast problems. And in Brooklyn, this is going back now
to the nineteen nineties. I just became very intrigued by
seeing this repeated pattern of my black breast cancer patients
being diagnosed at strikingly young ages and having the bulkier,
(24:59):
more challenging tumors, and so I wanted to become involved
with research to try to address the the answers to
those questions of why this was the case. And that's
what what motivated me to pursue a career in academic
surgical breast oncologist oncology. So I did fellowship training in
surgical oncology and my career has been devoted to breast
(25:20):
answer management ever since. Thank you for the dedication that
you have in the time and the research and the
insight that you've given to this specific issue. In interviews,
you describe a lot of healthcare disparities that black women face,
and this is something that we know but not widely.
(25:44):
How much of this is a problem which you would
consider medical versus political, social, or economic. Yeah, it's definitely
a combination of the two and the two different aspects
of the definition of racial ethnic identity, race as a
socio political construct versus race as a true genetic biologic entity.
(26:11):
They're really not mutually exclusive. And it is true that
because of systemic racism over the past. You know several
hundred years and uh in in North America that African
Americans have higher rates of poverty. We are more likely
to live in communities that have horror public school systems,
(26:34):
and that has downstream effect on higher education prospects, on
employment prospects. All of those things play in together such
that African Americans have poorer access to health care and
a whole host of adverse health issues. So racial ethnic
(26:55):
identity definitely is a socio political construct. How society layables us,
how we identify ourselves influences how we live, where we live,
and how we access healthcare. But racial ethnic identity is
also associated with some of the ancestral genetics that we
discussed previously, and some of these ancestral genetics related to
(27:19):
African ancestry, in this case in the setting of breast
cancer the relevance of Western sub Saharan African ancestry. These
genetics also play a role in cancer and in particular
breast cancer biology. So it really both aspects of race
need to be addressed comprehensively when we're trying to understand
(27:40):
breast cancer disparities. According to the Association of American American
Medical Colleges, only five percent of physicians in this country
a Black or African American. I'm wondering if you have
a point of view of how we can begin to
change that, because as you said you became interested in
this work as a woman of color who was treating
(28:03):
women of color and understanding that they're that that connection. However,
if there are not only five of physicians are black
African American, there's a huge gap there. Yeah, and it's
a tragic gap. It's tragic for many reasons. Um We
(28:24):
there are data showing that physicians of color are more
likely to gravitate towards diverse practices where they are caring
for more diverse patients. There are abundant data indicating that
patients of color want to have the physicians that reflect
their own background. And in general, I think that all patients,
(28:47):
regardless of their own racial ethnic identity, they will feel
more trusting of a healthcare workforce that reflects their community.
Of a very homogeneous group of physicians and a diverse
patient population, that mismatch is going to result in suboptimal
communication between physicians and patients, and that's never good. It's
(29:11):
also true that if we continue with a very uniform,
homogeneous physician profile, with the bulk of those physicians being
white males, then we're missing a whole pool of talent
and brilliance in the diverse population of young people and
(29:31):
talent and creativity that we could be tapping into so
that we have a stronger and even more powerful physician
workforce and oncology workforce research workforce. We are cutting off
our noses despite our face if we don't wrap our
arms in on this problem and improve the diversity of
(29:52):
our workforce. And I realized that that's not an easy
problem to tackle. There are a lot of u social
societal ills that need to be corrected in order for
us to take care of the pipeline problem that exists,
But it is something that we we have an obligation
(30:12):
to work on. Pipeline programs where we encourage young people
at the great school level, the high school level, college
level to get them interested in healthcare so that they
aren't necessarily relying on television to be exposed to the
medical professions and to the sciences. These pipeline programs are
(30:33):
things that we can do right now to engage more
young people in pursuing healthcare professions. A lot of the
people look at us and just say that since the
physicians don't reflect their own communities, they have less of
an interest in in pursuing that profession. It makes sense
and also so important that somebody like yourself is visible, because,
(31:00):
as we know, many people have said they cannot be
something that they cannot see. And for you to be
visible with the work that you do, you are you're
creating a path that did not exist previously, which is
my definition of a trailblazer, and that you're creating a
(31:21):
path for other women of color and women to look
at you and say, hey, I want to do this,
I'm interested in this, I care about this. If she
can do it, I can do it. Well, thank you
so much for those comments. I certainly hope that I
can serve in the role of being um somebody that
that inspires the young people of color to pursue healthcare
(31:45):
oncology as a profession. And I can honestly tell all
the young people that I encounter that this is a
great profession. It is very noble and it's exciting and
I wake up every day feeling that I'm going to
the best job in the world. During your career or
even as you were growing up, who were the voices
(32:07):
that you look to that inspired you to become the
woman that you are today? Well, oh boy, there are
so many strong, incredibly brilliant women out there. UM, in
my own circle of course, my mother, my sister who
tragically just passed away from triple negative breast cancer, UM
(32:30):
a couple of months ago. I'm sorry, huge role models
for me and tremendous sources of inspiration and support. UM.
Surely Chisholm another trail blazer in American politics. Uh. More
contemporary Opra Winfrey, of course, who isn't inspired by Oprah Winfrey? Uh?
(32:53):
Tina Turner in the music industry. Another incredibly strong, powerful women.
There are so any women out there in all walks
of life showing that we are strong, powerful, creative, and
we know how to get get the job done. Lisa,
I'm sorry to hear about your sister and her recent passing.
(33:16):
Would you be comfortable if I asked you a question
about what that experience was like for you? Sure? Yeah,
that's that's totally fine. In many ways, I still feel
is though, UM. An opportunity to to talk about it
is part of the healing. So obviously, treating being having
(33:42):
the knowledge and the experience you have with treating women
with breast cancer. What was that experience like for you
when your sister was diagnosed? It was just nothing less
than horrific, and my sister's experience with cancer was particularly
(34:02):
um dramatic and devastating. She was quite suddenly diagnosed with
widely metastatic triple negative breast cancer, and it actually made
itself apparent because of neurologic symptoms from brain involvement. My
sister was a brilliant, brilliant woman. She was and a
(34:26):
federal prosecutor, had a very very high powered job. And
then several years ago when she stepped down from working
as a federal prosecutor because she wanted to help take
care of my mom, by the way, you had a
spear stroke at the time. But when she stepped down
from being a US prosecutor, she took on a whole
new the profession of being a school's a teacher in
(34:49):
the New York City public school system, teaching troubled high
school kids. And she was doing this job every day
right up until the time that she was diagnosed. And
then it's just like overnight, she so it displayed these
neurologic symptoms and within a day and a half she
(35:10):
um was completely uptended and the cancer was widely metastatic.
And yeah, I'm so sorry that must have two and
a half months, two and a half months. I'm so sorry.
So these are the types of breast cancers that we
(35:33):
have to We have to get rid of all breast
cancers as a threat to women, but these particularly virulent
ones that hit black women disproportionately. We we have to
get control of this. Thank you so much for taking
the time to speak with me. Thank you for sharing
(35:55):
all this incredible insight and wisdom and tool us, and
and thank you for sharing the story about your own sister.
I greatly appreciate that, and I'm really pleased we got
to talk. And I hope we can support the incredible
research and work that you continue to do. Thank you
(36:19):
so very much. Debbie was such an giving person and
she was actually always very supportive of my research, so
I know that she would want your story to be
used in a positive way to educate other women, and
all of my research is in her name at this point.
(36:39):
H thank you, Thank you, Lisa, Thank you so much
for your time. This has been wonderful, wonderful to talk
with you. You have been listening to VS Voices. My
thanks to today's guest, Dr Lisa Newman. If you love
our show, please comment, like, and subscribe to wherever you
listen to your favorite podcasts, and as always, please follow
(37:01):
me Amandate Acadeney on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. As part
of Victoria's Secrets ongoing commitment to become one of the
world's leading advocates for women, their partnership with Pelotonia and
a a c R is enabling them to support a
new generation of female scientists in the field of cancer research.
Building on the twenty one million already raised to support
(37:24):
this work, this year, VS have announced five scholarships of
a hundred thousand dollars each to be awarded directly to
five female cancer researchers every year. The work of today's
trailblazing guest doctor Lisa Newman is supported in part by
Victoria's Secrets Global Fund for Women's Cancers. Thank you for listening.
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