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Fighting Cancer with Faith
11/12/2008
Chicago Native Uses Faith to Battle Cancer
WASHINGTON, D.C. – It wasn’t a scientific or medical breakthrough that helped Chicago native Grace Vincent cope as she waged a successful battle with breast cancer, only to learn of her husband’s Stage IV lung cancer diagnosis. It wasn’t countless hours in expensive psychotherapy that gave her the strength to help nurse her husband, Joseph Vincent, as he fought for his life. Rather, it was her faith in God and the Mayo African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Matteson, IL (a suburb of Chicago) that gave Vincent fortitude during the toughest time of her life.
“The simultaneous diagnoses that the doctors gave - me with breast cancer and my beloved husband with lung cancer - should have been a tragic day,” Vincent said. “However, I have faith in God and I know that he will not put more on you than what you can handle, so I decided to not let cancer beat me down. I pledged I would be the strength and the rock that my family needed in order to get my husband through his difficult battle.”
After her and her husband’s cancer diagnoses, Vincent, then a smoker and mother of two, vowed to fight her addiction to tobacco. She made a plan to quit smoking and stay quit.
The month of November marks Lung Cancer Awareness Month- a time that is dedicated to remembering those who have lost their lives to the disease and bringing awareness to the America’s number-one cancer killer. As a part of awareness month activities, Grace Vincent will continue to take a stand to help decrease lung cancer in the African American community by educating smokers on the importance of quitting. Her efforts are aimed at lowering the toll of tobacco in her community: Statistics show 45,000 African Americans die each year as a result of tobacco-related illnesses. Vincent intends to specifically make outreach to closet smokers – those who smoke but try to keep it from family and friends - especially close smokers within her church family.
A woman of strong Christian faith, Vincent grew up with messages of purity and hope, but she never thought they would play such a significant role in her life. As a Christian woman, Vincent knew the stigma that came with smoking and knew that smoking was frowned upon in her church family. She also can attest to the “you should have known better attitude” that people convey when thinking of those suffering from tobacco-related lung cancers, an attitude that fails to acknowledge the young age at which most smokers start smoking and the highly addictive nature of nicotine.
“You see when I was a young woman, smoking was sexy, it was the thing to do,” Vincent said. “There were ads in magazines showing how thin, beautiful women smoked, so of course that’s what I wanted to be – thin and beautiful.”
The process of quitting is a difficult one. Research shows that 70 percent of smokers want to quit, but only five percent are successful long-term.
“Grace has set the standard for the type of activism it takes to engage communities of faith, “said the Rev. Norris E. Jackson Jr., Pastor of the Mayo AME Church. “She never once worried about if her church family would judge her for smoking for more than 20 years, yet she continues to put her efforts into educating and empowering the African American community about the dangers and harmful effects that come with smoking.”
More information about lung cancer is available online at www.americanlegacy.org/codeblue. The Code Blue for Lung Cancer Web site offers details for the public and news media interested in localized stories about the disease for Lung Cancer Awareness Month in November and throughout the year.
To schedule an interview with Grace Vincent, please contact: Najma Roberts, 202-454-5561.
The American Legacy Foundation® is dedicated to building a world where young people reject tobacco and anyone can quit. Located in Washington, D.C., the foundation develops programs that address the health effects of tobacco use, especially among vulnerable populations disproportionately affected by the toll of tobacco, through grants, technical assistance and training, partnerships, youth activism, and counter-marketing and grassroots marketing campaigns. The foundation’s programs include truth®, a national youth smoking prevention campaign that has been cited as contributing to significant declines in youth smoking, EX®, an innovative public health program designed to speak to smokers in their own language and change the way they approach quitting, research initiatives exploring the causes, consequences and approaches to reducing tobacco use, and nationally renowned program of outreach to priority populations. The American Legacy Foundation was created as a result of the November 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) reached between attorneys general from 46 states, five U.S. territories and the tobacco industry. Visit www.americanlegacy.org.
The American Legacy Foundation® is equipped with a VideoLink ReadyCam™ television studio system, providing you with faster, easier access to the nation’s leading tobacco prevention and cessation experts. From this in-house broadcast studio, Legacy can offer immediate access to its experts to comment on breaking news, new research publications, or any news related to youth smoking prevention, adult quit smoking programs, or any issue related to smoking. The studio is connected directly to the Vyvx fiber network and is always available for live or pre-taped interviews. To arrange an interview using the ReadyCam, please contact Julia Cartwright at 202-454-5596.
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Contact: Najma Roberts, 202-454-5561, nroberts@americanlegacy.org