Breast cancer survivor pays forward ‘fortunate’ outcome, by lobbying, advocating for others

Warsaw resident Rhonda Ferrell recently returned home from three days spent in Washington, D.C. This wasn’t a sightseeing jaunt, but rather her annual trip to D.C. to meet with legislators and their staffs, as a volunteer with the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN). She and other ACS CAN volunteers lobby Congress for funding for cancer research.

Ferrell, 76 and a retired nurse, came to her advocacy work the way people often do, as the result of her personal experience. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in May of 1998, at the age of 51.

“I was doing my monthly checks and found a lump,” she recalls, adding, “I had an aunt that had had breast cancer, so I knew that I had a family history of it.”

She immediately scheduled an appointment with her doctor, who advised a mammogram. The mammogram didn’t show anything. It would have been tempting to accept those results because “that’s what everybody wants to hear,” says Ferrell, but her medical training kicked in. “I kept saying, ‘No, there is something there, and you need to check it.’”

Soon thereafter, an ultrasound found the lump that, because of its location, had been undetectable in the mammogram. And here is one of the key points Ferrell wants to make: “I was an advocate for myself because I knew there was something there, and that is important: I think you need to advocate for yourself.”

Things moved quickly after that, and within two weeks, Ferrell had a lumpectomy. She followed that with nine months of chemotherapy, then radiation, and, finally, 10 years of oral medications.

Her battle with cancer was long and arduous — for example, as with so many cancer patients, she was very sick following each chemo treatment — yet looking back on the experience, a word she uses repeatedly is “fortunate.”

It’s a word she uses to describe her job situation at the time — as Dean of Nursing and Allied Health at James Sprunt Community College, her schedule allowed her to set up treatments such that she never missed a day of work.

It’s a word she uses to describe the support she received from her students, friends and family, especially her husband and two daughters.

It’s a word she uses when talking about the fact that because of her health insurance, her treatment was covered and didn’t result in a financial hardship for her or her family.

And it’s a word she uses to describe the way in which she benefitted from all the research that led to her having received successful treatment.

The many ways in which she was “fortunate” — even while battling a terrible disease — led her to want to help others. Her initial volunteer efforts were with the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life in Duplin County, and her work with ASC CAN started around 2004.

Each year, when the group travels to Washington, the main goal is to secure funding for research, specifically for the National Institutes of Health. “NIH is the biggie,” says Ferrell, explaining that this government agency provides grants to pharmaceutical companies for research and development.

Furthermore, ASC CAN chooses two or three specific items on which to focus each year. This year, with 600 to 700 volunteers from across the U.S., Guam, and Puerto Rico “blanketing Congress,” says Ferrell, the focus was on securing support for two specific bills, one of which is the Medicare Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Act, which relates to a blood test that could screen for several cancers at once, and whether this test, once approved by the FDA, should be covered under Medicare. Ferrell sees multi-cancer screening as one of the most important developments currently on the horizon. “If you can draw blood and test for six or eight or ten or twelve different kinds of cancer, that’s much easier than going in and getting a pap smear and getting a lung scan and getting [so many different tests],” she notes.

The second bill ASC CAN is currently focusing on is the Prostate-Specific Antigen Screening for High-Risk Insured Men Act, which would require that health insurance fully cover evidenced-based tests for prostate cancer for high-risk men, including African Americans. The importance of this bill is underscored in a Dec. 21, 2022 ACS press release stating that ACS researchers found that “Black men…had an estimated 70 percent to 110 percent higher incidence and mortality rate for prostate cancer than White men overall in the U.S.”

In addition to lobbying at the federal level, ASC CAN volunteers also email and call members of the North Carolina legislature and go to Raleigh at least once a year to meet with State representatives or their staffers.

One issue Ferrell consistently raises is access to care. While some states have no cancer centers, “We are very, very fortunate in North Carolina to have three comprehensive cancer centers; one is at Duke, one is at Chapel Hill, and one is at Wake Forest. But,” she points out, “if I’m in Duplin County and I don’t have a ride to get there, they’re not doing me a whole lot of good. I always push access to care, coming from a rural county.” She also pushes for educational access, so that people will understand the importance of screenings.

Importantly, on both the state and federal level, ASC CAN operates in a “very much bipartisan” manner, Ferrell emphasizes. “It is not political.”

Over the years, ASC CAN’s work has produced results. For example, the North Carolina contingency received an award at this year’s opening ceremony in Washington for its work in helping to get Medicaid Expansion passed in the state, ensuring health care coverage for 600,000 people. “We worked on that for a long, long time, trying to get that done,” says Ferrell. This is also an example of ASC CAN’s work benefitting a much larger population than just those with cancer.

For her part, Ferrell will continue with her emails and phone calls, her trips to Raleigh and D.C., helping to ensure that others have “fortunate” outcomes.

Anyone interested in volunteering with ASC CAN is encouraged to call Rhonda Ferrell at 910-214-2987.