MSNBC, December 2008
By Giacinta Pace
NBC News
Dec. 18, 2008
On and off screen, Fran Drescher has always been outspoken and has always spoken out.
Whether portraying Fran Fine on her hit TV show “The Nanny," writing her New York Times best-seller “Cancer Schmancer” or leading her nonprofit Cancer Schmancer movement straight to Washington, Drescher is undeniably in charge.
Now the actress and cancer survivor is embarking on a new adventure as an American public diplomacy envoy for the U.S. State Department, traveling the world to spread the word that early diagnosis saves women’s lives. She works with health organizations and women’s groups to raise awareness of women’s health issues, cancer awareness and detection, and patient empowerment and advocacy.
The Public Diplomacy Envoy program is an offshoot of the State Department's Sports Envoy program, which sends U.S. athletes abroad to foster communication and understanding around the world.
“Each one of these envoys has really come to us in a different way, and their assignments always come from our embassies abroad,” says Assistant Secretary of State Goli Ameri. Drescher is the newest envoy in a list that includes champion figure-skater Michelle Kwan and baseball greats Ken Griffey Jr. and Cal Ripken Jr.
Reaching out
Kwan, who was named the first American public diplomacy envoy in November 2006, has traveled to countries such as China, Argentina and Russia sharing her American experiences.
“I think the best way to get to know America and its people is by conversation," says Kwan. "By doing that I think it opens their eyes because the world is getting smaller with technology, with Internet and telephone. You can fly anywhere in less than a day and so I think people need to get to know and understand their neighbors.”
Although Kwan traveled extensively and competed across the globe through the years, she says her diplomacy trips have been special because they are “hands-on” and “people to people.” She has an envoy trip scheduled early next year to the Ukraine.
Kwan’s advice to Drescher as an envoy: “Have an open mind, have an open heart …. and make that connection. I know that Fran Drescher has her own story to tell and that in itself will make that connection.”
Ameri says Drescher was an obvious choice for envoy on women’s health issues. She is a cancer survivor; founder of Cancer Schmancer, an organization that promotes early detection of women's cancers; and was a leading advocate for passage of the Gynecologic Cancers Education & Awareness Act of 2005, known informally as Johanna’s Law. The legislation is named for Johanna Silver Gordon, who died from ovarian cancer in 2000.
Early detection
Drescher first came under the radar of the State Department while she was in Washington working with politicians on Johanna’s Law. She impressed observers with her determined efforts to ensure that all women with cancer are diagnosed in Stage 1, when it is most curable.
“The reason why we lose loved ones to cancer is due to late-stage diagnosis,” Drescher says. She was appointed public diplomacy envoy on women’s health issues in September.
Her first trip was to Romania, Hungary, Kosovo and Poland. She visited health organizations, universities and women’s groups, and appeared on all kinds of media reaching people that the U.S. would normally not be able to reach.
One of her stops was at Camp Bondsteel, the main U.S. Army base in Kosovo. There, Drescher encouraged soldiers to take control of their bodies. “Particularly in the military where they are conditioned to take orders and not ask questions, I think that they’re at risk of late-stage diagnosis. All too often they may not know enough to recognize early warning whispers or they will slip through the cracks and not challenge their physicians as a medical consumer.”
Veronica Savanciuc, vice president of Renasterea Foundation in Bucharest, Romania, hosted Drescher in early October. Renasterea Foundation was launched in 2001 by Mihaela Geoana and focuses on women’s health initiatives, including a program to prevent breast cancer.
Savanciuc describes Drescher as a "special, very intelligent, energetic and empathic person.” It is because of these values that Savanciuc feels Drescher was able to effectively convey the point that prevention and early diagnosis is critical in the fight against women’s diseases.
While in Romania, Drescher used her international notoriety to reach many through television, print, special events and school assemblies where she spoke with young girls about the importance of prevention and the vaccine against the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus.
For Savanciuc, the most memorable moment of Drescher’s Romania tour came on Oct. 1, the international day of prevention of breast cancer. The Arch Of Triumph in Bucharest, like other landmarks around the world, was illuminated in pink, the international color of the fight against cancer among women.
“Fran was invited to switch on the lights and this was broadcast live on PRO TV news, the TV station with the biggest audience in the country,” Savanciuc said.
Drescher feels she needs to do everything in her power to spread the word about women’s health. “I got famous, I got cancer and I lived to talk about it, so I am talking.”
For Drescher, it took two years and eight different doctors to get a proper diagnosis. Emergency surgery caught her uterine cancer early at Stage 1, and she didn't have to undergo chemotherapy. She wrote about her experiences in her book, "Cancer Schmancer."
Cultural barriers
The celebrity is extremely passionate about telling women not to be intimidated by their doctors. She wants women to ask questions and be persistent when it comes to their well-being.
“In nations around the world there are cultural differences that make it even more restrictive for women to challenge their physicians,” she says. She adds that women in some countries will ignore a lump in their breast because they don’t want to be cut into and be undesirable or unloved by their husbands. They might also choose to “grin and bear it” because they are conditioned that family comes first.
Drescher wants to to show those women that by taking care of themselves, they are taking care of their family because “you are useless to them if you are six feet under.” Drescher is passionate “that through women’s health issues we [women] can come together, lock elbows, and supersede borders and political and religious differences because at the end of the day we are all women living in a man’s world.”
Meantime, Drescher continues to act, making a recent guest appearance on HBO’s "Entourage" and performing with Gabriel Byrne in “Camelot” for PBS. She continues to write with her “Nanny” writing partner with whom she recently completed a romantic comedy. She has a children’s book that will be coming out soon, and even finds time for a new boyfriend.
"The Nanny" star is also interested in a career in politics. She has lobbied to be appointed to serve the remainder of Hillary Clinton's Senate term.
Whatever the future holds, Drescher remains dedicated to uniting women on health issues and is optimistic that this is a way of uniting women globally on other issues as well. It's her dream to “shift the negative paradigm in the world today and in so doing create more female-friendly societies.”
