Danyelle Musselman never thought she’d find a career as rewarding as covering events such as the Super Bowl when she worked with ESPN, the NFL Network, Yahoo! Sports, and other major sports outlets.
But the wife of the head coach of the men’s basketball team at the University of Southern California, Eric Musselman, found her second raison d’être — her reason for being — when she began fundraising for the American Cancer Society. Musselman also became one of the first volunteers for the ACS’s groundbreaking and comprehensive VOICES of Black Women campaign, which works to determine the myriad of reasons African American women are diagnosed with and die from most cancers in America at higher rates than Whites and other demographics.
As with many families in America, particularly Black ones, Musselman was compelled to participate because cancer has impacted her in profound ways.
“My mom is a breast cancer survivor. And she actually lost her mom to ovarian cancer,” Musselman shared with rolling out. “So cancer is something that has really affected my family. And I know just through life experiences and studies that the key to increasing these survival rates is cancer research. So that’s why I want to be a part of [the study], because we need to find some answers. And I have a young 14-year-old daughter that I feel like this will affect her and, you know, then her future children.”
The VOICES of Black Women study is looking to recruit 100,000 African American females, ages 25-55, in the next few years to participate in a behavioral and environmental study to determine the factors that contribute to greater cancer diagnoses and higher mortality rates. The ACS believes it will be easier to recruit participants because this is not a clinical trial, but a study on the behavioral and environmental contributors. The participants will be asked to set aside 30 minutes every six months for a series of phone questions from the ACS, or one hour per year.
Ironically, although Black women have higher mortality rates when contracting cancer, they had not been asked to be a part of previous studies on cancer. That changes with the VOICES of Black Women campaign.
“I think that they’re going to better be able to pinpoint the type of cancers that are affecting Black women, why they are affecting Black women, and especially why Black women have had the outcomes that they have had, and it’s all not socio-economic. You know, some of it is biological,” Musselman said.
Women are asked to log onto https://voices.cancer.org/ to get more information and see if they qualify to join the study. You must live in one of the 20 participating states and Washington, D.C.
Musselman is the board chair for the Friends and Family Coaches vs. Cancer group and has raised millions for the Suits and Sneakers event, which she started in her house in Arkansas and continued at major venues after she moved to Los Angeles.
Covering the Super Bowl was undeniably enthralling for Musselman. But she says her work for the American Cancer Society has been life-changing.
“When [my career] ended, I didn’t think that I would ever get to do something that I would be proud of,” Musselman admits. “And so my work with ACS has kind of been that second act in my life. And it’s been surprising to me. But because of that, I think it’s been really special and something that I really care a lot about.”
