Mexico City, Mexico
Survivor, CFTC Graduate, Community Grant Project Leader
“Step by step we are raising awareness about self-care”
Maria de Lourdes Ruedas Hernandez, or Lulu, is a “full-time leader.” A resident of Mexico City, Lulu is a support group coordinator and is hopeful about breast cancer in her community. She believes that Mexico is making a difference through incremental progress, “step by step we are raising awareness about self-care.”
A Full Time Leader
Lulu is a breast cancer survivor already at age 47. In 2008, after her own battle with the disease, she approached Global Initiative team in Mexico with an offer to help as a volunteer so that she could participate in Course for the Cure™. Lulu hadn’t signed up originally as a participant, but was moved to get involved and do more for women with breast cancer. Her motivation came as a response to the help she received during her own treatment from the breast cancer NGO CIMAB, and another Global Initiative participant Arliza Lifschitz who was working with support groups at the time. Within one year, “Lulu’s drive and enthusiastic survivorship turned her into a full-time Global Initiative participant,” recalls Mexico Program Manager Miriam Ruiz Mendoza. Lulu even attended a second Course for the Cure™ to help again as a volunteer.
“Before the Course for the Cure™ I did not know everything I could do to help. CFTC has taught me to act and not just speak out.”
Lulu’s leadership takes on many different forms in her community. As a mother of two daughters, Lulu’s first commitment to breast cancer is to make knowledge and awareness about breast cancer available to a younger audience. Lulu encouraged her daughters’ schools to include breast health education and they listened. She now gives talks on breast cancer awareness and prevention in primary schools with a program of the Mexican Association Against Cancer (AMLCC), titled, “Today my parents, tomorrow it’s me”. This program has been around for a number of years and it provides young people with educational tools that enable them to take steps towards a healthy lifestyle.
A Vision of Empowerment
Lulu is also a leader among breast cancer survivors. She has been involved in a number of support groups at AMLCC and CIMAB, but most recently she has been working to develop a new breast cancer support group with one of the main public oncology services in Mexico, the Hospital de La Raza. This work will fill a huge void in support services and make them more accessible to a larger population in the city. Lulu is also creating a support group directory for breast cancer patients as a way to touch women she cannot reach in her daily life. This work embodies Lulu’s vision of empowerment, “(I want to) know my own rights; inform others of their own patient rights; and hold health systems accountable for those rights.”
A Change Agent for Mexico
Ruiz Mendoza describes Lulu’s advocacy for breast cancer patients and survivors as “crucial” in the absence of more widespread support in Mexico. Although official laws in Mexico require that support groups are available for cancer patients during their treatment, there are only a handful of support groups that focus their work on breast cancer. There are also two hotlines for breast cancer survivors, or those women and men still in treatment. Lulu describes that in addition to the lack of support, women are also up against, “machismo, lack of self-care, and lack of knowledge about patient’s rights”.
Lulu has found her voice as a “full time leader” for the Global Initiative, for women, and for Mexico. “Before the Course for the Cure™, I didn’t know everything I could do to help. The Course for the Cure™ has taught me to not just speak out, but to act,” adds Lulu. As Former First Lady Laura Bush remarked in a speech during the official launch of the Global Initiative in Mexico, “One day changed her [Lulu’s] attitude from passive to active.”
“Ms. Ruedas believes that even young girls should be aware of breast cancer and accustomed to performing breast self – examinations. She approached her daughters’ middle school about providing this information…She began making calls, and the [high] school will soon be reading her proposal to make breast cancer knowledge available to a younger audience.”
– Former United States First Lady Laura Bush