How has breast cancer affected you personally? If you don’t mind sharing.
Randolph: I’ve had my experience with breast cancer at 30 years old. My mother died from breast cancer at [an] early age, 57. From then, I have always made sure that my regular mammogram testing started every year since I was 40. I also have two sisters and nieces, and we make that a routine part of our preventive health opportunities. We have annual mammograms.
How can people help?
Ora Douglass: Number one, please tell people they must get vaccinated. We must get ourselves educated and stop coming up with all of these excuses, not to get vaccinated, we must get our mammograms, we must get tested. Because if we are not tested, we don’t know who else we are harming, and I don’t think any of us want to harm anyone in the community. That’s how we can be helped and keep [ourselves] informed.
Lastly, participate in research. Many Black people don’t like to participate in research, many don’t like to give blood, but we need to do these things. We can say where we want our research efforts focused on, that we want it focused on our community and where we want the difference. [For example,] if we give blood, we can say we want it to go back to the African American community.
