Advocate Profiles

Silent Spring Institute is grateful to the women and men who ask for - and tirelessly pursue - answers to the difficult questions we must resolve in order to stop the breast cancer epidemic. Their dedication and energy are a source of continuing inspiration. Through these profiles we hope to honor them and highlight their contributions.

Deb Forter
Executive Director, Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition

Joyce Clements
President and Environmental Chair, Maine Breast Cancer Coalition

Nancy Crumpacker
Secretary-Treasurer of the Board, Rachel’s Friends Breast Cancer Coalition

Joan Sheehan
Co-President, Capital Region Action Against Breast Cancer! (CRAAB!)

Bonnie Spanier
Co-President, Capital Region Action Against Breast Cancer! (CRAAB!)

Additional profiles will be posted regularly.

Joyce Clements President and Environmental Chair, Maine Breast Cancer Coalition
Home: Eastern US, currently living in Maine, with citizenry and strong roots in Ireland
Professional interests: Teaching and research around women's issues and women's lives, broadly construed, with the intention of fostering positive social change.
Hobbies: Work
Recent movie: Born into Brothels, “very moving, raises the question of where we should go and how we can make effective social change” (as of 7/2005)
Why I do what I do: Trying to improve women’s lives
Latest accomplishment: Ph.D. in Women’s Studies, completed November 2004

The turning point came for Dr. Joyce Clements when she was working in Massachusetts as a consultant in archeology. In the historical records and contemporary academic texts she reviewed, women's work and women's lives were often invisible. She decided to return to graduate school to learn how and why women had become invisible to history and to work to bring women's contributions back to center stage. Her coursework in women’s studies provided her with a theoretical frame for understanding how women and other minority groups have been marginalized, and helped her develop tools for creating positive change in women's lives.

Her work in graduate school, coupled with her respect for Rachel Carson, led to her interest in the connections between breast cancer and the environment. She is concerned that it is often disempowered individuals who are exposed to the environmental pollutants that may lead to breast cancer and “there is no money for a strong lobby” for this issue.

In November 2004, Dr. Clements became the president of the Maine Breast Cancer Coalition. In this position she is able to combine her interests in social justice, the environment, and breast cancer. One of her goals is to increase awareness of how the environment can affect health.

Her research training makes her ideally suited to help translate scientific findings into specific changes people can implement in their daily lives. One project she is currently developing is “a module within health studies in the school that teaches young women healthy behavior and works against the very unhealthy norms that women now face.”

She is targeting grade school and high school students because she is concerned that women and girls are “overloading [their] bodies with chemicals.” She hopes to “educate them to take preventative measures to not overdo chemicals in food and in their bodies so [that] later in life your body doesn’t become burdened with toxins you put into your body over the years.”

An essential part of this curriculum would be helping girls establish realistic standards of health and beauty. She is concerned that “young women [are] so focused on an unrealistic ideal that they make poor choices” including poor nutrition and over-use of cosmetics that contain toxic chemicals.

The Maine Breast Cancer Coalition was established in 1992. Its mission is to increase public awareness of breast disease; educate women and health professionals about quality care; advocate for legislative action; support breast cancer research; and identify and provide support services.