ACCESS Cancer Prevention Supervisor Learned Greatest Lessons as a Survivor

Hiam Hamade’s desk at the Community Health and Research Center is covered with papers. Documents from her patients, printed family photos, handouts on the center’s programs. But in the high, left corner of her office, a solo picture of her stands out. Beaming brightly and wearing a hot pink shirt, Hamade is no longer just the supervisor of Cancer Programs at ACCESS. She’s a survivor.

Hamade was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004 in her own offices at ACCESS.

“That day, we had the mobile unit and we didn’t have enough patients, so I screened myself,” Hamade recalls. “I came back stage zero–but it was something. I had a mastectomy and it’s in remission now.”

But the disease had been a part of Hamade’s life long before her diagnosis, though the thousands of clients she had helped screen since joining ACCESS.

Originally from Lebanon, Hamade worked as a nurse in Saudi Arabia and England before coming permanently to the U.S. in 1990. She came to ACCESS in 1995 and started working with their cancer research program, focusing on screening Arabic women for breast and cervical cancer.

“Our goal was to screen 100 people in the first year,” she says.

It was no easy feat. Adherence to Arabic culture meant that most women were reluctant–if not absolutely against–being screened.

“Women at that time were not used to someone coming to talk with them about their breasts or private things,” explains Hamade. “So it was a challenge, and to bring them to the clinic for a screening was difficult.”

Those who were screened faced different challenges when diagnosed, too.

“I remember the first woman we diagnosed in the clinic that year, and she was a Yemeni lady,” Hamade shares. “When we diagnosed her … the family was very mad. The lady was crying and I took her inside and said, ‘Why do your brothers have to do this? We’re trying to help you.’ She said, ‘If everybody knows that I have cancer, nobody will marry my daughters. So it’s better to go home and not to go for treatment.’"

The woman never accepted treatment, and died within a few months.

But despite their problems, ACCESS succeeded where other community health clinics could not because of the team’s familiarity with the language and the culture. And they went to extraordinary lengths to reach their goal that year, as well as build upon it in the years to come.

“We worked very hard,” says Hamade. “We went door to door. I called people on the phone. We went to the mosques. We started to succeed and people started to recognize us.”

They made home visits and gave women gifts as incentives to return for future check-ups. They provided transportation and stood at bedsides after surgery. They made people feel comfortable in any way possible.

And it paid off: Hamade says the ACCESS clinic now screens up to 2,500 people each year. They have also developed partnerships with the American Cancer Society, Karmanos Cancer Institute and various universities for research and prevention efforts.

Now, the clinic is focused on addressing a new influx of immigrants.

“It’s like we’re starting from scratch,” Hamade says. “Those people don’t have any education about cancer and they never had a screening, so we are visiting them.”

But despite her years of work in the field, Hamade said nothing could have prepared her for her own diagnosis seven years ago.

“No matter how much you’re educated and how much you know, when you’re diagnosed, you will be different,” she says. “For how many years and for how long did I work with cancer and do education and council patients? But when I was diagnosed, it was like something that was the end of the world.”

But as Hamade worked through her own struggle against cancer, it gave her a new understanding of what her patients go through and thus, yet another way to better serve them.

“Before, when I used to council them, I’m a professional so everything was not a big deal,” she says. “Now, when we diagnose somebody with cancer, my heart breaks for her. And when I talk with her, it comes from my heart. And she can sense it.”

Learn more about ACCESS's health programs at www.accesscommunity.org.