Meet Our New 2020 MBC Advisory Board
As part of Rethink’s MBC Advisory Board, we have had the privilege to volunteer alongside passionate and knowledgeable women to advocate and drive change for the metastatic breast cancer (MBC) community.
MBC is breast cancer that has left the breast and traveled to distant sites, such as the bones, liver, lungs, and brain, just to name a few. Approximately 20-30% of patients diagnosed with early stage breast cancer and treated with curative intent, go on to later develop a metastatic recurrence. This is in addition to those who are stage IV from the get-go.
The MBC Advisory Board was created to address issues that are important to the MBC community including drug funding, delays in access to treatments, the lack of system transparency, improving the information given to newly diagnosed MBC patients in cancer centres, improving access to clinical trials and palliative care services, and tracking metastatic recurrence.
Once the disease progresses to MBC, the disease is no longer curable. This is NOT a chronic disease, but a terminal one (less than 25% of women living for five years past their diagnosis). Those with MBC are in a continual cycle of scan, treat, and repeat. We rely on access to life-extending therapies, including new and innovative drugs, to live longer.
In 2018 and 2019, the MBC Advisory Board was instrumental in developing, reviewing and/or rolling out multiple initiatives that help meet the needs of women living with MBC and continuously bring the MBC perspective to the breast cancer conversation. This has included:
- Speaking at the Breast Cancer symposium to discuss shared decision making with physicians.
- MBC Ally campaign
- MBC: Talking to your Kids Resource
- Public education about MBC
- Multiple blog posts, social media posts, tweets, etc.
We would like to personally thank all of the former board members for the time and dedication that they showed in the initiatives. It was a pleasure to work with all of you. I learned so much from each of you. Thank you!!!
Welcome to our new board members. We can’t wait to see what we will achieve in 2020!
Nathalie Baudais, Co-Chair
Tasha Westerman, Co-Chair
