A self-described ‘Philly girl’ talks about winning the nation’s second highest civilian honor

When Fran Visco was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 39 in 1987, she feared she wouldn’t live past 40 or see her infant son grow up.

On Wednesday, she celebrated her 77th birthday. Her son — now a 38-year-old law school graduate — hugged his mother at the White House earlier this month when President Joe Biden awarded Visco the Presidential Citizens Medal for her decades of work to end breast cancer. The award is the nation’s second highest civilian honor after the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

“The moment I will never forget is when I got off the stage and we walked out of the room at the end of the ceremony, and my son was there to greet me and he had tears in his eyes and gave me the sweetest hug,” Visco said. “That, to me, is the best memory of that day.”

Visco, a self-described “Philly girl” who lives in Bella Vista and attended West Catholic Girls’ High School and graduated from St. Joseph’s University, has served as president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC) since 1992. The coalition supports breast cancer research and aims to eradicate the disease, and is made up of survivors, researchers, policymakers, and activists.

Visco’s coalition was at the forefront of asking medical researchers and scientists, “Can breast cancer be prevented?” Today, the coalition’s work has helped spur the development of a vaccine that Visco said will be in clinical trials later this year. The vaccine is designed to target all subtypes of breast cancer.

» READ MORE: READ MORE: Philly breast-cancer fighter Fran Visco is among those honored with the Presidential Citizens Medal

Earlier this year, Visco was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, considered stage IV. She said she’s responding well to a new treatment, which was developed using a research grant from the U.S. Department of Defense under a program her coalition spearheaded. So far, the coalition has helped bring in $4.5 billion to the cause, she said.

The Inquirer spoke with Visco about what it meant to win Presidential Citizens Medal, advancements in breast cancer prevention and treatment over the past three decades, and her own ongoing fight against the disease.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Well, I received an email on Dec. 20 from someone in the White House asking me to call them to talk about an event at the White House on Jan. 2. When I first received the email, I wasn’t certain if it was spam or not and I Googled the person who sent it and saw that it was a real person in the White House. So I called, and I was told that I was chosen.

There was a moment where I didn’t know how to react. I thought, ‘Wait, is this real?’ I was shocked, and then, of course, completely thrilled. And while I was on the phone, I was online Googling ‘Presidential Citizens Medal’ to make certain I knew exactly what it was. And I just was completely excited at that point about the idea of being on stage in the East Room in the White House with the president of the United States, and what it meant for the grassroots advocates across the country that are part of NBCC.

In 1992, there were very few breast cancer groups and not a lot of attention being given to the issue. And of course, that’s why we formed the coalition — to bring system change around political advocacy in breast cancer, bringing together grassroots groups across the country, and growing that network of educated advocates to focus on the mission to end breast cancer.

And so over the past 30 years, of course, breast cancer became a topic that was very much in the public arena, and more and more breast cancer organizations have sprung up, but really in terms of progress made in saving lives, that hasn’t happened as much as the public believes.

We still lose over 40,000 women a year to breast cancer. When I was diagnosed in 1987 that number was around 39,000. We have made some progress in terms of treatment. There have been a couple of treatments that have been effective, but for the most part, we really haven’t made much progress in breast cancer. We just talk about it a lot more.

We are an organization that constantly challenges the status quo. So we have always believed that you should not paint breast cancer pink, because that makes it pale and comfortable and pretty. Breast cancer is none of those things.

So we are really activists, and we do not want the public to believe that we’ve made significant progress in breast cancer when that is really not the case. We want everyone to understand that we still lose tens of thousands of women in this country each year to breast cancer, and over a million worldwide, and we need to focus on that.

We have always said, if you want to raise awareness of breast cancer, raise awareness of the truth and the reality that breast cancer still takes way too many lives. Raising awareness about breast cancer could be a good thing, but awareness of what?

At first, I was just stunned. I had no reaction. Then, I just took a deep breath. I thought about my son and my husband and my sisters and just put one foot in front of the other and did what I had to do. It just reinforced my resolve to make certain the National Breast Cancer Coalition continues and grows.