Interview with CHE Partner, Susan Osburn

Formerly with the Lymphoma Foundation of America

Steve Heilig: Tell us your own background and how you came to do the work you do.

I started my work life as a Registered Medical Technologist. This is a disappearing field, which is the laboratory version of being a registered nurse, except with more rigorous science training and an emphasis on diagnosis rather than treatment. I specialized in microbiology and worked in the labs of major hospitals for a number of years, doing diagnostic testing and teaching college seniors.

Since my middle name ought to be “Verbal”, I eventually left the bench and went into advocacy work, first with National Women’s Health Network and later with Lymphoma Foundation of America (LFA). Both organizations have an unusually strong patient-advocacy stance.  LFA asked me in 1997 to do a research project on the relationship between lymphoma and pesticide exposures, and the resulting report has been an entry point into years of environmental activism for LFA and for me.

Somehow I also managed to fit in two children, a career as a professional musician, and a master's degree in psychological counseling.

Primary mission and work of my organization: 

Lymphoma Foundation of America exists to serve the needs of lymphoma survivors and their families and friends in all ways that we can: individual counseling, referrals, help with second opinions, and a buddy system; support groups; patient and public education; transportation grants to low-income, rural lymphoma patients; and advocacy. We take a patient-first stance and are staunchly in support of patients’ rights. We are interested in true, primary prevention of lymphoma and research concerning its causes, as well as in treatments.


Striking recent developments:

In the field of lymphoma, the proliferation of new, highly specific treatments is the big news, and there is more to come in this area.


Lessons we've learned in pursuing our goals:

Educating the public, about even something so obvious to us as pesticide toxicity, is a huge and challenging task!


Biggest need in environmental health/obstacle to that goal:

Biggest need is to help the public understand that “environment” is not an optional interest, nor a hobby, nor a national park – it’s woven into our lives and our bodies, and profoundly affects our health. Biggest obstacle seems to be that in modern America, advertising and sales of products is a massive undertaking which dwarfs our efforts in these regards – how do we compete with a flashy automobile ad on TV every seven minutes or so?


How CHE is useful / how could CHE be more useful:

CHE is most useful in keeping abreast of new developments in the world of environment/health issues and keeping us informed of them. CHE could be best effective, we believe, by realizing that grassroots activities and lay public educators are the best bet and that change in public opinion (and resulting policy change) is not likely to arrive through powermonger-based channels anytime soon. In addition, in the world of science, anyone who takes an environmental stance is labeled as an advocate rather than as a scientist, so we may as well approach issues from the advocate viewpoint.


What's new with your organization?

Lymphoma Foundation of America has recently published a report on lymphoma and solvents exposures on our website. This report is structured loosely along the lines of our report on lymphoma and pesticides. The report can be viewed by visiting www.lymphomahelp.org and clicking on Research.

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Posted: 12 December 2005