Enough
Because We Can Stop Cervical Cancer
Introduction
Enough
Because We Can Stop Cervical Cancer
Cervical cancer kills almost 350,000 women each year. What’s more horrifying, is that millions have died of this disease that’s nearly 100% preventable. It’s no secret that healthcare is full of inequities, with a severe lack of accessible screening programs. But women’s health care is also impeded by cultural, gender, and political barriers, issues that have combined to create devastating consequences.
A leading expert in cervical cancer prevention, Dr Linda Eckert takes her years of experience and weaves it together with the voices of the courageous women who use their own experience of cervical cancer to advocate for change. This heart-breaking, yet hopeful, book takes you through the world of cervical cancer with evidence-based information, personal stories and actionable outcomes. Society flourishes when women have access to safe and affordable healthcare. Together we can make this need a reality and eliminate the world’s most preventable cancer.
Project Origin
Words are Powerful
While writing academic papers is a longstanding part of my medical career, this book springs from a different, very personal place. Six years ago, my then 19-year-old son was severely injured in a car accident that took the lives of three dear friends as well. During my son’s long recovery from multiple injuries, including severe brain trauma, I started a blog to keep friends and family apprised of his condition. Writing my story became a powerful processing tool for me, a way to explore grief and the randomness of loss, and to celebrate healing. Personal narrative writing lit a fire inside me. I witnessed firsthand the power of stories to speak to what matters.
Cervical cancer matters. Women matter.
Now, I am following a new calling. I am working on a nonfiction book that allows women and those who love them, through the power of their own voices and personal stories, to ask these questions: Why does this preventable cancer continue to impact over half a million women a year? How can we stop this needless suffering and death?
I believe that as we speak about women and celebrate their roles in their families, communities, and society, this book can testify and be a collective witness to the impact of cervical cancer. Your voice and the power of story will lead readers to join us in saying “Enough.”
Enough deaths from cervical cancer.
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About
Dr. Linda Eckert
I was raised in Wyoming, the land of more antelope than people. In this sparsely populated region, I found deep meaning in community—be they faraway neighbors or members of the church I connected with as an adolescent. My community and faith nurtured my passion for justice and my core belief that every person matters.
Combining my childhood desire to become a physician with my faith’s calling to serve others, my 30-year-plus career as an obstetrician gynecologist has allowed me to walk with women in a way that spans racial, economic, and national divides. After years spent in clinics in Liberia and Kenya, hospitals in Nicaragua, and migrant clinics in Brownsville, Texas, I landed at the University of Washington’s Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Global Health, where I am now a professor and provide clinical care.
Harborview Hospital, where I work, is a veritable United Nations, serving people from all over the globe, who represent a wide spectrum of disease and a variety of economic means. In this setting, my passion for health justice has led me to global cancer prevention work with the World Health Organization (WHO). For the past decade, I have had the opportunity to work with the WHO on policy development for the HPV vaccine and cervical cancer screening, and I’ve had the privilege of assisting countries such as Namibia and Malawi as they develop their own cervical cancer prevention strategies.
At the same time, as I’ve cared for patients, I have watched women continue to die of cervical cancer all over the globe.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Please keep in touch or reach out with any questions you may have about this project.