This is the story of Terese Lasser, who was fondly known as, “Ted”. 

In 1952, at the age of 48, she found a lump in her breast. She went into the hospital for a quick-section biopsy, performed under general anaesthesia, with assurance from her doctor that such lumps were usually benign. 

Ted founded Reach to Recovery in 1953 in New York City following her own story with breast cancer.

She awoke to find herself, in her words, “bound like a mummy in surgical gauze.” Much to her surprise, a Halstead radical mastectomy had been performed. 

A need for emotional support for breast cancer patients

Following her mastectomy, Ted was dismayed to learn that her doctor and hospital staff did not know where she could get a breast prosthesis and could not recommend rehabilitation exercises to help her recuperation. 

At that time, the incidence of breast cancer was on the rise, but there were few programmes available to support women diagnosed with the disease. 

As part of her own emotional recovery, she was determined to bring together women affected by breast cancer in order to better address their unmet needs. 

She ardently believed that peer support could help other women with coping, adjustment, quality of life, and survivorship issues. She also believed that women could work together to overcome the stigma of breast cancer.

The work begins

Mrs. Lasser courageously set to work convincing the cancer community that women with breast cancer could benefit from the opportunity to talk with other women who had experienced the disease. 

She formed the Reach to Recovery movement on this simple, yet universal, principle: women who have lived through breast cancer and give freely of their time to help other women facing the same experience are a valuable source of support.

The growth of Reach to Recovery

Women affected by breast cancer enthusiastically embraced the programme, and in 1969 the American Cancer Society took on custodianship of Reach to Recovery, expanding breast cancer peer support throughout the United States. 

In 1972, the American Cancer Society’s then Vice President for Service and Rehabilitation, William M. Markel MD, wrote in the epilogue of Terese Lasser’s autobiography, Reach to Recovery: 

“The merger of the Reach to Recovery Program with the American Cancer Society in 1969 brought the vast resources of the Society into play. 

Now that a national voluntary health agency with strong professional and lay leadership was committed, Reach to Recovery had access at the grass-roots level to the more than 3,000 American Cancer Society units throughout the country. 

The programme could be brought into the small community hospital as well as the large urban medical centre. Ted (Terese) Lasser’s inspired leadership and the technical expertise and the organisational skills of the ACS together created a force that showed great promise… 

Our expectations were more than realised…we give hearty thanks to Ted Lasser and her devoted Reach to Recovery Volunteers, to the many physicians who have supported and used the Reach to Recovery Program, and to the lay and professional Volunteers and staff at all levels of the ACS, locally and nationally, who are helping make Reach to Recovery available to the woman who has had breast surgery, wherever she may be.”

Reach to Recovery International

Just two years later, in 1974, the Reach to Recovery principles were introduced to hospitals and cancer treatment facilities throughout Europe and Reach to Recovery International had begun. 

Through the efforts of the ACS, RRI was quickly embraced by many countries throughout the world. Reach to Recovery has become one of the world’s most active community-based breast cancer support movements, with active affiliates in more than 100 countries.

International uptake of RRI saw the ACS entrust custodianship for the global program to the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) in 1994. 

Insightfully, the ACS recognized the strong potential for program enhancement and mutual benefit by harnessing UICC networks to facilitate a shift in strategic focus from direct intervention and service provision to member development activities and networking, knowledge synthesis and transfer, capacity building through collaborations and partnerships, and global advocacy.

Reach to Recovery today

In recent years, RRI has successfully broadened its scope of activity to accelerate progress towards attainment of the World Cancer Declaration, encompassing capacity building, education and awareness, prevention and early detection, and activism. 

RRI has been particularly effective in uniting women across economic divides and world continents, empowering a grassroots movement to improve universal cancer control. 

RRI is successfully positioned as one of the world’s most well recognized and active breast cancer support movements.

The work of RRI has achieved international eminence and recognition through the development of an active online community and the biennial convergence of volunteers at the Reach to Recovery International Breast Cancer Support Conference, held throughout the world every two years.

Ted Lasser’s legacy

More than 70 years after Terese Lasser’s diagnosis, her tireless campaigning has transformed world-wide the experience of breast cancer survivorship, inspiring the conviction that women can empower one another to help eliminate breast cancer as a life-threatening disease for future generations.