Houston cancer survivor helping Black community fight disease: 'I just kept showing up'

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Numbers released by the American Cancer Society show that cancer deaths among African-American and Black people have declined. However, they continue to be much higher than other populations.

Black men continue to die from prostate cancer at a higher rate than white men, and Black women are more likely to die from breast cancer than white women.

Screening and testing will help, but talking about it in the Black community will also make a difference.

"In the Black community, we are taught whatever happens in our home stays in our home," Houston's Gwendolyn Jackson said. She's working to find answers and to get others in the Black community to open up about cancer.

"If we don't talk about it, how can we end it? How can we help the next generation? If I don't talk about it, how will my daughter know?" Jackson said.

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Jackson is a cervical cancer survivor. The devastating disease runs through her family.

Her father died from lung cancer, two of her aunts lost their battles, and one of her brothers is battling prostate cancer -- one beat it.

Jackson has had regular checkups, but her family history caught up with her.

"I was already running a cancer organization. I just thought, 'God, no,'" she said.

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Jackson would go through treatment and thought she beat it, but her doctors found something else.

"They told me, 'You have cancer cells in your legs, and you have a tumor on your spine.' Then they told me, 'You have 16 months to live.' It got real," Jackson said.

Jackson refused to buckle, and she would fight even harder. Four years later, she's cancer-free.

"I just kept showing up," she said with a smile.

The American Cancer Society is looking for 10,000 cancer-free Black women in Texas to be part of their Voices of Black Women for a long-term cancer study.

"It's the biggest study ever done of its kind," Jenny Todd, vice president of the American Cancer Society in Houston, said. "Are the high cancer rates among Black people because of lifestyle issues we don't know? This is a 30-year study to find out."

"People in the Black community frown on clinical trials," Jackson said. "I push clinical trials because I'm still alive."