Black women battling breast cancer experience an overwhelming disparity in outcomes compared to white women due to lack of resources, racial bias and an unequal treatment.

It's time to ERASE THE LINE of inequality in breast cancer care.

In the words of Chrysalis Initiative founder Jamil Rivers (a black women who beat breast cancer), "We're done asking for permission from the biased healthcare system; if you're not going to help reduce the death toll, get out of the way."

In the US, Black women are 40% more likely to die from breast cancer than white women even though incidence rates are nearly identical.

Black women are often dismissed and ignored, and treated with prejudices that keep them from receiving an equitable standard of care.

Even when insurance and access to care is the same as other groups, Black women still experience disproportionately poor outcomes... unnecessary intervention (surgeries) and death.

Why? A lack of trust in the white medical establishment’s ongoing and historically unequal treatment of black women, especially in the area of experimental research (e.g. The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments and the treatment of Henrietta Lacks).

How do we get Black women the equal care they need, so they can feel safe acquiring standard of care treatment and enroll in ground breaking and life-saving clinical trials?

The overwhelming disparity in outcomes for Black women battling breast cancer is slowly becoming more noticed. Some organizations are bringing awareness to the situation.

But we think awareness isn't enough when deaths are this high.

We needed more than talk, we need action.

So we created the world's first digital resource specifically designed for Black women by Black women to directly address the problem.

It was time to ERASE THE LINE of inequality in breast cancer care by giving Black women the resources to identify and call out inequality and report that to other Black women and the medical establishment itself.

Since proving bias (unconscious and conscious) can be a difficult thing, we wanted to get specific.

Effectively, for the first time ever, we're able to quantify and collect data on bias as it happens in real time so it can be directly addressed.

Among other tools within the platform, we're utilizing a rating system on a scale of 1-5, 1 being the worst and 5 being the best. Patients are able to rate their healthcare interactions along their journey. The info is collected within the app and use to study and inform how the healthcare system needs to improve.

Our target audience focused on a Black female demo with a breast cancer family history, obesity, age/menopause life stage.

The platform (desktop & mobile) provides first-of-its-kind tools to recognize and address bias & racism for Black women managing their cancer care including: 1) 24/7 access to a coach who survived breast cancer herself and understands how to navigate around bias 2) a custom rating and review system for black women to see who provides equal care and more importantly who doesn't and 3) and bias tracking system where every interaction is scored to keep tabs on progress—all with the purpose of #ErasingTheLine of inequality in breast cancer

All with a budget of zero dollars, Erase the Line has been able to secure participation from hospital systems all over the country, including leaders in cancer research like University of Texas at Austin, Penn Medicine, and Northwestern Medicine, enabling women all over the country to access the care they are receiving.

Future plans include additional hospitals and tumor types.

By providing the tools to ensure Black women are receiving the care they need, Erase The Line is rebuilding trust between Black women and medical institutions, resulting in a 50% increase in trial enrollment by Black women in ground breaking and life-saving clinical trials, a critical first step in eliminating the racial bias in breast cancer mortality rates.

93% of Black women who've participated in the Erase The Line program report improved treatment of care in their breast cancer treatment, and most importantly, a 90% increase in the trust in the medical system standard of care.

Since launching the effort, we've had major hospitals sign on to participate. Acknowledging the issue and agree to reassess their process through custom built Equity Assessments. Hospitals include: Penn Medicine, MD Anderson Cooper, Rush Medical, Fox Chase Cancer Center, University of Illinois Chicago, University at Texas Austin & Northwestern Medicine.