I’ve talked about my grandmother a few times, but I want to write about her a bit more,
because she’s one of the reasons I care about any of this.

She passed away from pancreatic cancer, which came after years of smoking. When it
happened, I took it as a medical tragedy, something that just happened to her. But
the more I learned about her disease, the more I see it as a public health story too, not just a personal one.

Smoking isn’t a small risk factor. According to the CDC, tobacco use is the leading
preventable cause of cancer and cancer deaths, and it’s linked to a long list of cancers,
including pancreatic cancer. The CDC says each year hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. die from a cancer related to tobacco use. And this is all preventable.

That’s really hard for me to accept. My grandmother’s cancer wasn’t just bad luck and it was
connected to something that we can actually prevent. Things like tobacco taxes, smoke-free public spaces, education campaigns, and programs that help people quit have all shown to lower smoking rates. The CDC even says that more than a million tobacco-related cancer deaths have been avoided since 1990 because of prevention and control efforts.

So when I think about my grandmother, I don’t just think about her cancer treatment. I think about all the years before she was diagnosed with cancer, where prevention could have made a difference. Addiction is real and quitting is really hard, and I’m not blaming her at all. It just makes me think about what it could have been like if we had found a way to help her quit smoking.

This is where “health before healthcare” became personal for me. By the time cancer is
diagnosed, it’s already too late. I’d rather spend my time working on everything else that’s happening that comes before that.

Article I read: Cancer and Tobacco Use — CDC Vital Signs