MEET LISA
Before she was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, Lisa Hayes’ big dreams were to watch her teenage children grow up, graduate college and start lives of their own. Twelve years later, Lisa is living those dreams. She’s a proud mother of grown children. She also lives a full life as an avid sports fan and “first lady” of the church her husband pastors. After her diagnosis, Lisa added another dream: to end racial disparities in breast cancer outcomes. African-American women are diagnosed with breast cancer at later stages, face more aggressive forms and die at rates more than 40 percent higher than Caucasian women. The reasons are many, Lisa knows some of them from experience. When she found a lump under her arm, she had no health insurance. Afraid of the financial burden of a bad diagnosis, she waited two months to see a doctor. She didn’t realize there were programs ready to help her. Fortunately, Lisa beat cancer. Now she’s working to see other African-American women don’t make the same mistake.
Advocacy is a labor of love but her ultimate dream, she said, is unemployment.
“I’d really like to work myself out of a job.”