WBCC Involvement
WBCC Member and Policy Committee Member (many years)
Board Member (since 2024)
When did you first become a part of the WBCC? What were your reasons for joining the organization?
I don’t remember the year I joined, but I joined to educate, advocate and legislate on behalf of so many who live, and those who die, after a breast cancer diagnosis . . . as well as for myself.
What do you consider the most significant achievements of the WBCC?
Thirty years of WBCC educating, advocating, legislating . . . both in Wisconsin and on a national level.
What are the two or three most important contributions you have made to the WBCC?
I use my voice: in person, on social media and in letter writing.
What challenges has the WBCC faced in its history? What challenges do you see the organization facing in the future?
The continual challenge is to remain positive, resilient, bold and fierce . . . as it should not take this long to pass significant legislation, as written, to benefit those with a breast cancer diagnosis.
Who are two or three members of the WBCC who should be recognized as part of the organization’s history? Why are they important?
Kathleen Harris, Dawn Anderson, Sandra Gines: for their passionate leadership.
In Memory: Gail Zeamer, whose name, I hope, will be on the bill hopefully to be passed in the next Wisconsin legislative session. Gail put her heart into years of passionate advocacy, before her death this past June 2nd.
What has your involvement with the WBCC meant to you?
WBCC has helped me help others, as well as myself.
Are there any stories you would like to share about the organization and your participation in it?
I wish WBCC had been available longer than 30 years!!!
In my childhood and teen years, friends and family members with a breast cancer diagnosis would have benefited from WBCC, as would a college friend who kept her diagnosis within her immediate family . . . and died in her twenties. Friends who died in their thirties and forties, with years of devastating metastases, and still, in their sixties and seventies and beyond, even with WBCC’s stellar presence.
My “serious story” is a very serious comment:
WHY do legislators have such difficulty/resistance/opposition to getting important breast health care bills out of committee and to the floor(s) for votes on bills “as written” and as advocated for by patients, families, medical staff (nurses, doctors, surgeons, oncologists, radiologists), WBCC and other organizations???
WHY does this roadblock remain???
We (they, everyone) ALL know someone with a breast cancer diagnosis.
We ALL should care.
Helen and WBCC president Lindsey Nathan O’Connor at the Zeidler Municipal Building in Milwaukee celebrating the Health Department and the Mayor’s proclamation of October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month, 2023
Helen (center) with advocate Linda Hansen and WBCC vice president Dana Johnson at the Survivor Advocate Review Meeting and Lunch at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, 2024