South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
First lady visits top Florida cancer center
Urges women not to delay mammograms
First lady Jill Biden, visiting one of Florida’s top cancer centers Saturday, expressed optimism that the federal “cancer moonshot” would dramatically reduce the incidence of cancer and increase patients’ survival.
That’s a long way off, and Biden focused on what women today can do about breast cancer: get screened.
“We can’t beat cancer alone. In fact, we all have a part to play in this fight. Doing our part means getting the screenings we need,” she said at the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehen
sive Cancer Center branch in Plantation.
Biden acknowledged people are busy, “especially the moms and the nanas out there. You’re so busy taking care of everyone else it can be hard to take care of you. Mammography can save lives, and nothing on your to-do list is more important than that.”
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and Biden highlighted National Mammography Day, which is Friday. “Don’t wait. We owe it to ourselves and the people we love to take care of our health.”
She began her public remarks recalling the Oct. 5 visit she and President Joe Biden made to Lee County, where they surveyed destruction inflicted by Hurricane Ian and spoke with survivors and people working on response and recovery.
“The road to recovery will be long. You’ve seen the pictures on the television. But the spirit and the resilience of this state will persevere. And we will be by your side every step of the way,” she said.
The first lady spent about two hours at the cancer center in Plantation.
During the tour, Biden met with two groups of physicians and patients, and had a briefing about the latest development in mammography.
One was Karen Amlong,
75, who described herself to the first lady as someone who was “as of last Wednesday, officially cancer free.” She said her husband, Bill Amlong, is undergoing treatment for prostate cancer.
Karen Amlong is a lawyer, who in 1974 at age
27 was the first woman from Broward elected to the state House of Representatives.
She extolled care at Sylvester, as did Patricia ‘Trish’ Gainer Gaddis, of Miami, who said she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011 at 51.
She had a lumpectomy and thought she was in the clear. “I thought cancer was in my rearview mirror,” she said. Two years later she was diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic cancer.
Gaddis said she made a “decision to carry on with grace and dignity, and is now enrolled in a clinical trial at Sylvester.
“I feel like I am thriving ” and enjoying life — and still working 40 to 60 hours a week as a divorce lawyer, prompting Biden to quip: “In case I should need it?!”
Gaddis said, “Metastatic breast cancer didn’t slow me down, but COVID put me in lockdown.”
Sylvester, one of two National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers in the state, has 10 locations in South Florida.
Among the programs Dr. Stephen Nimer, director of all University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center locations, described to Biden are the three vans it uses to deliver care to underserved communities, including Little Haiti, Liberty City and Little Havana in Miami-Dade County. He said there is also a unit dedicated to firefighters.
In a mammography room, Biden was briefed on, and asked multiple questions of Dr. Monica Yepes, chief of breast radiology, focused on developments in screening for women with dense breast tissue — and insurance coverage.
Biden was accompanied by U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, and Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, director of the National Cancer Institute.
Wasserman Schultz had her first mammogram at age 40, and shortly after, in December 2007, noticed a lump in her breast.
Over the next year, she had seven major surgeries, including removal of a malignant tumor, a double mastectomy, breast reconstruction and removal of her ovaries.
Since then, Wasserman Schultz said, “I have dedicated my personal and professional life” to efforts making breast cancer screening available, and covered by insurance. “Beating cancer for me was only the start of my survivorship journey.”
“To save lives every woman must have access to the screenings she needs when she needs them,” Wasserman Schultz said. “It’s what saved my own life.”
In February, when Biden helped relaunch the federal “cancer moonshot” at the White House she described 1993, when she was in her early 40s, and four of her friends were diagnosed with breast cancer in one year.
The president and first lady’s son, Beau Biden, died of glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor, in
2015.
Biden was vice president at the time, and then-President Barack Obama asked him to lead the cancer moonshot, aiming to accelerate progress in fighting cancer.
The relaunched cancer moonshot has a more ambitious goal: reducing death rate from cancer by at least 50% over the next
25 years and improving the experience of people and their families living with and surviving cancer.
“For Joe and me and for Debbie, this is the mission of our lives. And we are ready and proud to work beside you as you fight cancer and as you survive it. Because healing is an act of communion — and none of us are alone,” Biden said. “Together, we can give patients and their families the care and the future they deserve. That idea of community and collaboration is at the heart of the
“This is the mission of our lives. Together, we can give patients and their families the care and the future they deserve. That idea of community and collaboration is at the heart of the cancer moonshot.”
— First Lady Jill Biden. Biden relaunched the federal “cancer moonshot” program in February with the goal to reduce the death rate from cancer by 50% over the next 25 years.
cancer moonshot.”
After the tour, Biden, Wasserman Schultz and Bertagnolli spoke to about 30 cancer patients, survivors, community leaders and elected officials. Among them: Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre, and Debbi Hixon, whose husband Chris was killed in the massacre.
The elected officials included Broward County Commissioners Steve Geller and Nan Rich, both former Democratic Party leaders in the Florida Senate, and state Reps. Christine Hunschofsky and Robin Bartleman, both Broward Democrats.
The event was an official visit, not a campaign event. After the Broward visit on Saturday she was set to travel to Orlando for campaign events with the Democrats at the top of the November election ballot, gubernatorial nominee Charlie Crist and U.S. Senate nominee Val Demings.