Mary Fisher Featured Speaker at AtlantiCare Event

COURT HOUSE – The AtlantiCare Foundation will host AtlantiCare’s Tenth Annual Women’s Health Signature Event Oct.24, 2013 from 4 to 8 p.m. at The Carriage House, 25 South Pitney Road, Galloway, New Jersey. Mary Fisher, activist, artist, and author, will be the keynote speaker. The evening will include a sit-down dinner; Fisher’s presentation; a Zentangle® art exhibit by cancer survivors, their friends and family; giveaways; chair and hand massages; makeup demonstrations; mini spa treatments; and vendor sales and services. Cancer survivors will receive a special gift. All attendees will get a copy of Fisher’s second memoir – Messenger, A Self Portrait. Formerly called AtlantiCare’s Breast Health Signature event, the annual event held during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month now celebrates survivors of all women’s cancers. Event co-chairs are Anjeanette Brown, MD, breast surgeon, AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center and Robin Stoloff, general sales manager and health reporter, NBC 40. Cancer survivors will receive a special gift. All attendees will get a copy of Fisher’s second memoir – Messenger, A Self Portrait. Proceeds of the event will benefit programs and services of the AtlantiCare Cancer Care Institute, a Fox Chase Cancer Center Partner, in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey.
The Louisville, Kentucky native and AIDS and breast cancer survivor lectures nationally about vulnerable women, discrimination, and the experience of having diseases including AIDS and cancer. Fisher first achieved fame in 1992 when she told the Republican National Convention in Houston, Texas that she had contracted HIV from her husband. She urged attendees and millions of television viewers worldwide to address the AIDS crisis and to treat those who were HIV positive with compassion in the speech, “A Whisper of Aids,” which is included in “Words of a Century: The Top 100 American Speeches, 1900-1999” (Oxford University Press).
Fisher founded the Clinical AIDS Research and Education (CARE) Fund at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, to which she donates all proceeds from books, speeches and public appearances. She has served as an ambassador for UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. The author of six books, Fisher’s first autobiographical memoir, My Name is Mary, was published in 1995 when AIDS was a universally terminal disease. In 2011 while receiving treatment for breast cancer, Fisher decided to write a second memoir. “My first was about dying of AIDS, a will and testament for my children,” she told The New York Times. “Now, I wanted to write about the thrill of living.” Her new memoir, Messenger, A Self Portrait, chronicles her fight against cancer within a life of gratitude.
As an artist, Fisher is well-known for her quilts, sculptures, and textiles. She has also achieved fame as a jewelry designer. Her passion for art has helped her spread her message about AIDS. Seven of her sculptures are in Geneva, Switzerland at the international headquarters of UNAIDS.
Registration fee for AtlantiCare’s Women’s Health Signature Event, one of several ways AtlantiCare is marking National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, is $55 ($50 if registration is by September 13). To register, or for more information about AtlantiCare’s Breast Health Program or other AtlantiCare services, call the AtlantiCare Access Center at 1-888-569-1000, visit www.atlanticare.org or find AtlantiCare on Facebook at www.facebook.com/atlanticare.
To register for AtlantiCare’s Women’s Health Signature Event or more information, including vendor/sponsorship opportunities, or to find an AtlantiCare physician or provider, call the AtlantiCare Access Center at 1-888-569-1000, visit www.atlanticare.org or find AtlantiCare on Facebook at www.facebook.com/atlanticare.