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Everything Causes Cancer These Days PDF Print E-mail
Program News
Written by Letter   
Wednesday, 13 December 2006 00:00
Audra Gatts reflects on her year of service at Road of Life
My generation has been told that nearly everything causes cancer—aspartame, antiperspirant, under-wire bras. We spent years pouring Equal in our coffee, having moist underarms, and letting it all hang out, only to be told that we shouldn’t have worried after all.

Now we’re told (as we always feared) that preventing cancer isn’t that easy. We have to have healthy eating and exercise habits, avoid smoking, and maintain a healthy weight—starting in childhood. It’s enough to make one long for the days when good health boiled down to swearing off Sweet ‘n’ Low.

When I came to Road of Life, I was jaded on anyone claiming to know the “cause” of cancer. I grew up on the idea that cancer is caused by a few obvious things (sunburns, asbestos, and tobacco). I grew up on the phrase, “well, everything causes cancer these days.”
I was also skeptical of Road of Life because, having just returned from Ghana where many people could not even afford adequate food, diseases of “excess” didn’t strike me as much of a social justice issue.

It was while writing my first grant proposal, in which I was to portray Road of Life as an anti-poverty initiative, that I began to change my mind. I was quickly immersed in an ocean of research showing that the link between lifelong health and cancer was strong and well-documented.

I also came to see cancer as a social justice issue. There is a marked disparity in cancer risk, mortality rates, and appropriate detection and treatment between rich and poor. Underlying this disparity is the fact that low income families tend to have limited ‘health literacy.’

During my term of service at Road of Life, I began to recognize that it was not just the obvious culprits (poor education, dead-end jobs) that kept people in poverty. I learned about the injustice of poor health, which heavily influences low-income families’ ability to make ends meet.

I traced this new knowledge back to my own experience as a mentor to low-income youth. At the time, I had overlooked the obvious, but now I was struck by the high rate of smoking and obesity, the low consumption of fruits and vegetables, and the high incidence of chronic disease. Without health insurance, it was common that these diseases would not be treated until a trip to the emergency room was necessary, posing a great financial burden for the families.

These days, “Health literacy,” “preventive health,” “health promotion,” and “wellness” have all become buzzwords. It seems that every day insurance companies are investing in prevention, major corporations are implementing wellness policies, and people are finally talking about the quiet crisis of poor health. A new advertisement on the local bus stops points out the dangers of childhood obesity, asking patrons, “At what point in your child’s life can baby fat no longer be called baby fat?”

It is now clear that Road of Life was well ahead of its time. Although it took me a while to catch up, I think my personal transformation as a VISTA at Road of Life has embodied a greater cultural shift taking place across the U.S. Health is increasingly viewed as a personal, lifelong endeavor rather than an uncontrollable force. These days, it’s more common to hear about the dangers of smoking and obesity than of antiperspirant and aspartame.
 

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