The Quest for an RA Spokesperson: Looking for Our Jolie
One of the biggest barriers to creating effective awareness about RA is the lack of an icon who can personify the disease (and it wouldn’t hurt if they were sexy, too). This week on HealthCentral, I mused on the search for a spokesperson:
“RA needs a spokesperson. Someone in the public eye. Someone who is respected and admired. We need someone to whom people will pay attention, someone who can in one moment teach the world about RA.
Last week, Angelina Jolie did that for breast cancer. She shared her story about being one in a fraction of women who have a faulty gene which greatly increases their risk of developing breast cancer. Her courage in coming forward didn’t just create awareness about this gene, but also made a lot of women decide to be more vigilant about mammograms. On top of that, Jolie also spoke about the financial barriers that may prevent women from getting potentially life-saving tests. The story went viral, crossing boundaries between news and entertainment media. Everyone were talking and writing about it. Of all the roles she’s inhabited, this is arguably the most badass!”
You can read the rest of that post here.
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I just said the same thing. Someone was complaining about celebs who get political or talk about medical issues, and I jumped on them. We choose to elevate these celebrities in the media and they have a platform that the average person does not. So when someone like Angelina goes public with a medical struggle or gets political I applaud them. In the next breath I said that if I were a celeb, I would never shut up about RA or marriage equality!