#FWOTM: Fran Drescher Gearing Up for the Women's Health Summit

Known to many teens of the nineties and Millenials as the effervescent caretaker with the beloved yet absurdly satirical Long Island drawl, the nanny, has seriously pushed the envelope in a lot of ways you may have missed in the last decade. Fran Drescher has become a significant force in the realm of advocacy for women’s health. With considerable charisma and personal touch, Drescher’s organization Cancer Schmancer has taken a compelling role drawing attention to breast cancer prevention and detection. Her organization instructs women on how to take environmental precautions to prevent contact with carcinogenic materials by detoxing your home and limiting cancerous factors in life. Cancer Schmancer offers a wealth of tips on ways to maintain body and mind in a state of relative health. There is also an interesting youth campaign called WE THE FUTURE that opens a space for youth to begin a registered advocacy club around raising cancer awareness.

This October, Cancer Schmancer will be running a Women’s Health Summit that incorporates all kinds of holistic and mindful learning practices as a way to encourage women to take control of their bodies and transform from passive patients into active medical consumers. From the looks of the programming, it’ll be a perfect day to reflect with a panel of experts on integrative medicine, to network with all of the various organizers and innovators attached with Drescher’s vision, and to laugh with “empowerment” through comedy with Rosie O’Donnell!

We had the pleasure of interviewing Fran before her upcoming event and to see if we could figure out the origins of her Fierce Woman Factor!

Fran Drescher you are truly a mensch! You’ve been a survivor of cancer for almost two decades if my calculations are correct, and out of your experience you’ve created an amazing foundation for empowerment through your Cancer Schmancer book and organization- What was the spark that made you decide to share your experience as a cancer survivor as opposed to managing it privately?

“For those who don’t know the story… 15 years ago, I had a series of unusual symptoms, and I knew something was wrong, but no one could tell me what it was. So after two years and eight doctors, I was finally given a very simple test and found out that I had uterine cancer. Fortunately, it was slow-growing and still in Stage 1. I had a radical hysterectomy, and have been cancer-free ever since. I wrote a book about it, Cancer Schmancer, and during the book tour, I met so many women from all over who’d had experiences similar to mine. And I realized that this was just the beginning for me. This is a problem that needed to be solved.

So I started the Cancer Schmancer Movement, and now I speak as an ambassador for women’s health around the world, preaching Early Detection and Prevention. The best way to cure cancer is not to get it in the first place, and there are many things you can do to reduce your risk. That’s a huge part of what the summit is about. And if, God forbid, you do it cancer, it’s best to catch it as early as possible. Catch it on arrival, 90% survival. That’s another topic we’ll be discussing at the Women’s Health Summit.”