Racial disparities have been documented in many areas of healthcare, including plastic and breast reconstructive surgery. In this video, plastic surgeon Julia C. Stevenson, MD addresses these disparities and provides practical information that will help you make an informed decision about breast reconstruction. This video also features activist Ericka Hart, MEd who discusses her own experience with breast cancer and reconstruction, and her path to accepting her changed body. Dr. Stevenson and Ericka provide practical tips for coping with a changed body and increasing self-love and body positivity.
Living Beyond Breast Cancer is a national nonprofit organization that seeks to create a world that understands there is more than one way to have breast cancer. To fulfill their mission of providing trusted information and a community of support, they offer on-demand emotional, practical, and evidence-based content that is meaningful to those newly diagnosed, in treatment, post-treatment, and living with metastatic disease.
Ericka Hart, MEd is a kinky, poly, cancer-warrior, activist and sexuality educator with a Master’s of Education in Human Sexuality from Widener University, Ericka Hart has taught sexuality education for elementary aged youth to adults across New York City for over 10 years, including serving as a Peace Corps HIV/AIDs volunteer in Ethiopia from 2008-2010. Diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer in May 2014 at the age of 28, she realized that neither her identity as a queer black femme, nor her sex life as a survivor, was featured prominently in her treatment. She decided to do something about it: going topless (and viral) in public, bearing her double mastectomy scars to end the lack of black, brown LGBTQIA+ representations and visibility in breast cancer awareness.