- This is a story about rising up about how human ambition can overcome the seemingly impossible, reminding us that anything is possible.

For over a decade I've traveled the world, making films with a global health focus.

- That's great.

Looking good.

Imagine the most important woman in your life, how much she means to you.

Now imagine her dying from a cancer that is totally preventable.

There's a global movement underway to end cervical cancer, a disease that in the United States of America, takes the lives of approximately 4,000 women each year.

Together we are going to discover some of the incredible work taking place in the USA today and what can be learned from the rest of the world.

This matters to me because when we lose a woman to a preventable cancer, that loss impacts all of us.

I was filming at an enormous cancer hospital in Sri Lanka.

I will never forget the day that changed my perspective on women's health.

I remember being in a very crowded hospital ward, which was like nothing I'd ever seen before.

There was rows and rows and rows of cot beds.

There was fans to move the air around, but the humidity and the heat was quite intense.

- We can see that she's really upset - And she wants information.

So I remember filming with a woman, she couldn't have been much more than 30 years old.

Clearly very, very unwell.

And I just remember her looking up at the doctors so desperately hoping for information.

And the reality of her situation was that she was probably gonna die very soon.

- First thing we need to do is get her infection under better control.

Like most women, she's integral to her family.

She's a wife and a mother, a breadwinner.

It dawned on me that when a woman's life is cut short like this, The knock-on effects are catastrophic.

This is not that story.

Believe it or not, this is a positive cancer story.

In fact, it's the most extraordinary health story of our time.

It's the story of Conquering Cervical Cancer.

- We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard A moonshot is an ambitious, groundbreaking effort with unforeseeable outcomes.

It sets out to achieve something that is generally believed to be impossible.

- It's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

- Geneva, Switzerland is the headquarters of the World Health Organization.

A resolution has been made by all countries in the United Nations to eliminate cervical cancer.

There are three pillars to the elimination strategy.

Vaccination of girls, cervical screening or testing of women, and treatment for those who need it.

And this too is a moonshot.

I'm here to talk with Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus the Director General of the WHO.

Alright, so I'll, I'll get straight into it if that's okay.

- Yeah.

So the WHO's prioritized cervical cancer elimination.

What was the tipping point for that decision?

That call to action?

- The number of cases globally, new cases globally of cervical cancer is more than 570,000 out of this, more than 300,000 die.

And at the same time, we have the weapon to prevent this from happening.

We have the vaccine, we have the diagnostics, and we have also treatment.

And when you have all this and a woman is dying every two minutes, it is not acceptable.

So that's the tipping point.

So people say, no, this is not acceptable.

And we have to do something.

- Even in the United States, too many people die of cervical cancer.

- The mortality today in the US and Alabama is now no different than 1999.

We haven't made a dent.

- I can't tell you the number of times that I've cared for women who have been screened, they've been religious with their screening, but because of financial barriers, they can't get evaluated and they can't be treated.

I think that's a shame.

I mean, I think that's a travesty.

- Just having the solutions in place isn't enough.

Those solutions need to be modernized.

It is totally unacceptable that in 2023 doctors are using tools from the early 1970s to treat cancer.

- I think people just, it's, it's kind of just out of the back of their mind.

They don't understand it until it's too late.

- To lose anybody to cervical cancer is terrible because it is so preventable and so treatable.

- We are gonna travel to four states in America and discover how they're taking on the challenge of cervical cancer elimination.

We'll also learn about the work underway abroad as this disease is not only found here.

Why does elimination matter?

Because global elimination of cervical cancer could save the lives of an estimated 62 million women worldwide.

And conquering cervical cancer invites us to dare to imagine a world without cancer.

- Cervical cancer is one of the only cancers that we've totally figured out.

We know what causes it, we know how to screen for it.

We know how to treat preinvasive disease.

So really no woman should be dying of cervical cancer.

Everyone calls it a big C for a reason.

It's, - It's scary, isn't it?

You, you understand the impact it has on not just the patient but the family, the loved ones that you leave behind the pain.

- Cancer can be conquered.

Cervical cancer particularly can be conquered.

- There is a concerted international effort from everyone, whether it is a developed country, developing country, we are all moving towards this, this goal - When we have all the weapons at hand, failure should not be an option.

- There's a lot of ambitious goals to go for in this life, but to say goodbye to a cancer who wouldn't get excited for that.

- 2004, my life changed.

I got a call at work stating that my biopsy had came back and they saw something cancerous.

For the last couple of years I was having to go and do a Pap test twice a year.

My doctor, he was just telling me that they were coming back abnormal.

I was experiencing bad pelvic pains.

Other times I would have had embarrassing moments of going to work and walking and I was discharging blood clots.

So it got to the point that I was wearing protection every day to keep from the embarrassment.

'cause I never knew when something would appear.

I went, met with my doctor and he told me he had to immediately do a hysterectomy.

And at that time I was 30 years old and I was in the process of trying to get pregnant.

At that time I didn't know the questions to ask.

I wasn't educated on cervical cancer.

They said no to childbearing.

And that's something that I wanted.

- I am visiting Professor Ian Fraser, who led the team that developed the vaccine to prevent the virus that causes cervical cancer, which kills 300,000 women annually.

Let's go back to the beginning.

What is cancer?

- Cancer is the abnormal growth of cells in your body.

Basically cells that should stay quiet, grow and divide and spread through your body and cause problems.

- And how did the name cancer come about?

- In ancient Greece 2000 years ago, Hippocrates was the father of modern medicine and he observed all sorts of illnesses.

One of the illness he observed was cancer.

To him skin cancer looked like a crab on the skin.

So he gave it the name Cancero, which is crab in Greek.

And that name has stuck ever since.

Do you know what the major predator of crabs are?

- No, - Their major predators are octopuses.

That's probably a good idea from the octopus's point of view, if you've got eight legs, you've got a much better chance of getting control of a crab than if you just have two arms, - Which is an interesting analogy with the way we're actually tackling cervical cancer.

- Yeah, we really need all the tentacles we can get.

If you like, to get cervical cancer under control.

- Your work's been quite instrumental in the potential elimination of cervical cancer.

What does that mean to you personally?

- Look, I, I always, as a doctor, wanted to be able to help people and learned very quickly that there are a lot of very good doctors out there, but there are a lot of problems that need to be solved in order to make healthcare better.

So I decided I would focus on medical research and I'm lucky enough to pick an area where something could be done.

I mean, you don't want to see anybody dying unnecessarily, but seeing young women dying when they've got young kids, that's something you really have to do something about Papillomavirus is an annoying virus because we can't grow it in the lab.

We had to wait until the techniques of genetic engineering came along.

And then my colleague Jian Zhou and I, we found a way of building the shell of the virus and it was the shell of the virus that has become the vaccine.

Vaccines are the single most effective public health measure that we've had after clean water and good food.

This vaccine rates with the poliovirus vaccine in terms of its ability to prevent disease.

If we look back at the history of Poliovirus, roughly the same number of people used to die of polio every year as currently are dying of cervical cancer.

I'm here at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where I have heard about a remarkable doctor who spent her childhood educating people about polio and now as an adult is dedicating her career to cervical cancer.

- I had polio when I was eight months old in Brazil and my mom would spend her life, she would take me door to door, literally with the shorts to show, to really show the disability and say, you don't want this to happen to your child.

But she did in a way that was very proud of it and made me feel important.

Who would not vaccinate their child when they saw a mother with a disabled child, with her with the disease?

I mean, how wouldn't you?

I think polio was people like my mother and was when Rotary Club jumped in and mobilized the rotary clubs in the world, cervical cancer is exactly the same thing.

We have the vaccine and we have the screening.

It's in the hands of civil society to really mobilize to get these tools out.

- We have seen a steady increase in the number of kids getting HPV vaccine since 2006 and it was rising at about 5% a year.

So not bad.

And then covid hit and all healthcare, you know, suffered.

So we've seen some really concerning numbers about just how far that drop has been for HPV vaccine, pretty much any child through the age of 19 in the United States can get the HPV vaccine for free.

- In Alabama, really the only ways to get the HPV vaccination are to go to your pediatrician or your primary care provider or a local county health department.

There's a lot of barriers.

Alabama's very rural.

It's difficult because of the distance to the clinics.

It's difficult because we don't have that many physicians in the rural areas.

- Cervical cancer is a disease of poverty.

So if you look at the distribution of cervical cancer in Alabama, some counties experience higher burden of disease.

- After COVID-19, after the coronavirus, vaccines and the word vaccine has really kind of become taboo with certain groups.

There's mistrust with vaccines.

I've heard people talk about not wanting to go to the doctor because they're scared.

They're, they don't want to know, they don't want to go get screened in case something is wrong.

They don't have high speed internet.

And so if they don't have that high speed internet, they may not be receiving a lot of the media forums and a lot of the information that may be being pushed out in other places.

Transportation is an issue.

It's a multifaceted problem that needs to be attacked from a lot of different angles.

- One of these angles is screening women.

If an abnormality is detected through a Pap or HPV test, a colposcopy can be performed to closely examine the cervix for precancers and early signs of cervical cancer.

It can then be treated and cured before it leads to invasive disease.

This procedure is not painful.

- We are the sixth poorest state in the US.

So with that being said, when you tell a woman that she needs to go two hours up the road for treatment and she's thinking, well, I barely have enough money, you know, for my children or my household expenses, how am I supposed to juggle this?

And, and it's really hard for women because we know we're gonna take care of our family before we take care of ourself.

So women were just not getting their procedures done.

So we partnered with Alabama Breast and Cervical Cancer Detection Program.

We had six nurse practitioners to get credentialed as colposcopists.

So you know, we had like a little small army and we started going, we took our equipment and we went from, you know, north and south and east and west and, and we started doing colposcopies.

I think since 2019 we've done like 1100 colposcopies.

Now if there is a diagnosis or they need further diagnostic care, we also have a program to pay for that.

I have a colleague that she and I work together.

We tend to, we call tag team wherever we go.

We typically go together.

- It's really beneficial for my patients, especially I identify with them being Hispanic myself, I used to be in their shoes.

When I came to the state 33 years ago, I knew very little English.

So I know how it feels to go in a place where you are not able to understand each other.

It's a wall in between because you try to communicate with them.

They're not giving you the information that you want in a way that you understand, especially talking about cervical cancer.

You have a diagnosis, you don't understand exactly how serious it is.

You can have severe consequences when you explain to them in the same language in a way that they understand they will be more willing to come back and do the next step of care.

So I think it's very beneficial for me to be present and, and of course it's very rewarding for me to be able to help them.

- Since we've started taking the the procedures to them.

We are seeing women that have been needing a, a colposcopy for years, but they just never did it.

So I think it's, it's just been a great program for the women in the state of Alabama.

- We are in southernmost part of Texas, right where Texas, the Gulf of Mexico and Mexico meet.

We are in some of the poorest counties in the United States.

And so obviously our population is overwhelmingly low income and has a low health literacy rate.

Additionally, more than 90% of our population is Hispanic.

We have folks who've not been able to get seen by a doctor in many, many years.

And that's why we have a population that has one of the highest cervical cancer rates in the country.

- In the US whenever I see a patient who has advanced cervix cancer, most of the time they've had screening at some point, usually a Pap test or HPV test that was abnormal, but then they didn't have access or have the resources or the knowledge to come back in and to be navigated to an appointment to get treatment for preinvasive disease.

- The main barriers here in the valley are several.

One of the things that is obvious here is that a lot of people live in the shadows.

There are people here who are undocumented and are afraid to access healthcare.

Transportation is another one.

A lot of the times the healthcare they need to access may be 30 miles away.

If they are a family with one car and the person that works at home needs to use that car, then the lady is stuck at home - To help solve this problem, a fully equipped mobile clinic was established.

If the women can't get to the clinic, then bring the clinic to them.

- We have a portable ultrasound machine that we can use.

We're about to incorporate a portable colposcopy machine, so really pretty much able, we can do pregnancy testing and just a variety of things.

So we can do most basic women's healthcare.

And really we're focused on cervical cancer prevention.

A lot of our work has to do with having community health workers or promotores that actually are part of the community and using their connections and the trust that they can build up with or that have built up with the patients.

- We want women to screen because this is the only way we're gonna find precancerous lesions, which is where you can eliminate the cells that can turn into cancer.

We particularly looked at women that had not had a Pap smear in greater than three years.

And then we reached out to them via phone and encouraged them and educated them on the importance of screening.

We went to health fare events, we went to supermarkets and we reach women doing their day-to-day activities.

And then if we find women that are in need, we help navigate 'em to services.

- Historically TogetHER for Health was really created to build consensus around HPV and cervical cancer prevention outside of the US.

But because I live and work in Alabama and Alabama has among the highest rates in the country, I say to people, I sometimes felt like an imposter going to bed at night knowing that I was working so much and so hard for women all around the world.

But ignoring sort of what was happening in my own backyard.

I decided to reach out to colleagues at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

- Within a few weeks, Heather, Isabelle and Nancy had put together an action plan to eliminate cervical cancer in the state of Alabama.

They called it Operation Wipe Out.

- Where do we start?

You start small.

You know it's like a recipe.

Let's see if it works first and then we expand.

And so Chambers County has the highest incidence of cervical cancer.

- Isabel herself worked through Birmingham's Rotary Club to connect with Rotary down in Chambers County.

- When we first started, met Heather and Isabel and the folks from the Birmingham Rotary Club.

We start putting together plans.

Well next thing you know we've got involved with Auburn University School of Nursing, then we start talking to the Alabama Department of Public Health, the Chambers County Department of Public Health.

And we're gonna do a vaccination component.

How are we gonna do that?

Well, we've got kids.

Wait a minute, where are the kids at?

Oh, they're in the school.

So let's go.

Let's go talk to the school system.

So we talked to our superintendent - And it was alarming for us to know that the Chambers County numbers were as high as they were.

How could we partner?

And what could the school system do to help educate and to help start to get information out about the vaccine?

- All right, say it with me.

Preventive medicine is better than reactive medicine.

Do y'all know what that means?

No.

Okay.

So we're gonna start with preventive medicine and y'all can start making great decisions about your health right now.

Chambers County has the highest rate of cervical cancer in Alabama.

- And when educating the parents, we need to send things out to them in flyer form.

We need to send things out to them on our social media platform, provide them with the information and allow them to make the best decision that they think that they need to make for themselves and their kids.

So right now we have five different schools that have participated in the program this year.

And what we find is that over time as parents start to understand the information, they see their friends and they talk.

And then I think that those numbers will increase as we move forward.

- There's been lots of folks that have tossed in their hat that have come to the aid of the operation wipe out.

And so it just builds upon itself.

And so our partnership here in Chambers County has just been phenomenal.

- Good morning.

I'm excited to introduce a statewide effort to eliminate cervical cancer in Alabama.

Yes, eliminate it.

Operation Wipe Out cervical cancer in Alabama is the name of our effort.

And today we launch an action plan to do just that.

- Having successfully made an impact in Chambers County, Operation Wipe Out could now expand statewide.

By bringing together a number of organizations united under the banner of Operation Wipe out.

Their sights have turned towards the elimination of cervical cancer across the entire state of Alabama.

- There's three steps to this.

There's prevention and then there's the screening and then there's follow up, making sure the appropriate testing or treatment happens.

And in each of those areas we are striving to work through those barriers and see if we can't make a difference.

- And much to our surprise, everybody that we've reached out to, we've engaged, we've told them about this issue and really the magnitude of the issue in their area have stepped up and said, what can we do?

How do we get the word out?

How can we continue to build this movement?

- If I can see the end of two diseases in my lifetime, I mean my mom would be so happy.

I don't see why not.

Not only other states, other countries.

- I still have some unanswered questions about the virus that leads to cervical cancer.

So I'm calling on one of the world's leading experts to get some clarity.

Thanks for having a chat with me today.

- Oh, you're welcome.

- Really interested to know what is HPV?

- So HPV is the human papillomavirus and it causes almost all of cervix cancer worldwide.

- And how do you get it?

- HPV is spread through sexual activity.

It's a very common infection.

In fact, 80% of us at least will have an HPV infection sometime in our life.

But typically we won't know about that.

'cause in most cases, the body clears the virus naturally and medical intervention isn't needed.

It's when a persistent infection is established with one of the types that is capable of causing cancer that we've got a concern.

- And so how would you detect that - The collection of the sample is the same as in the old Pap program?

So that involves pelvic exam with a speculum and a doctor or nurse taking a sample from the cervix.

Well, one of the great benefits of the HPV test and one of the really exciting opportunities is that we know now that a sample a woman takes using this small swab from the vagina is as accurate as a sample taken from the cervix and a pelvic exam.

That opens up so many opportunities to reach women for whom that exam is a really big barrier.

We've used this opportunity not only in Australia but in a partnership in Malaysia, my colleague Yin Ling Woo.

- So a Pap smear, a conventional Pap smear requires quite an uncomfortable pelvic examination.

The healthcare professional needs to use a speculum to access the cervix in a female.

So to remove that aspect of the discomfort, what we've done is we've now used self sampling.

And this is really through the knowledge sharing by our friends in Australia - To open up this tube.

You hold it at this red tap here, okay, you twist and you pull - Self sampling, also called self collection is performed using an HPV test, - Okay?

And you insert it until you feel your fingers.

Okay, once inserted, you have to twist it five times like this.

- So imagine you've transformed something that's so invasive to a simple test where women can do this test in their own privacy, taking their own time.

And if we ask women how do they find this?

More than 95% of the women have said that they'll do this.

And they would recommend this to a friend.

And 35% of these wouldn't have had a Pap smear ever in their lives before.

- Having seen the success of the self sampling model in Malaysia, I wanted to know how this may work in the rural setting of Alabama.

- In remote areas, you'll find that women may not have a gynecologist in their community.

The healthcare provider may be a nurse, may be a primary care physician, they may only be servicing clinics in those communities once or twice a month.

If you don't get the timing right, if you don't really work to make it a priority in your own sort of, in your, you know, personal priority for yourself, you can easily miss out on healthcare access in rural communities.

- The gaps are one, the patient doesn't come in for screening or can't get access to screening, right?

And they don't come in for screening because there may be cultural barriers, there are transportation barriers.

This is why self sampling is really important.

And I'm really very much convinced that by thr time that I retire, that how we screen women against HPV will look radically different.

- A cervical screening is not, is not bad.

But for something you could do in your house that you wouldn't even have to drive anywhere, that would be amazing.

- It is becoming increasingly evident how important innovation and partnerships are to achieving this moonshot.

So I've come here to New York to discover how new approaches are changing the game.

- When I was 33 years old, I was working at Google.

I was at Google for almost 11 years.

I was 35 weeks pregnant with our son Arthur.

And I got into this care window at the end of my pregnancy where, you know, then they start to check your cervix.

And it was in that first weekly appointment in the last month of the pregnancy where during this exam my doctor discovered a tumor.

Everything happened very quickly.

It was four days between the discovery of the tumor to having a stage two B cervical cancer diagnosis.

Because I was so far along and because there was high confidence that delivering the baby would give the best chances of both the baby surviving and me surviving, we started talking about having an emergency C-section.

So the next day after I met with the oncologist, I delivered my son.

There was very little time for me to feel like a new mom.

I had about two weeks from the time of his delivery to when my treatment first started.

You know, the message to me was focus on yourself and focus on getting through treatment and take one step at a time and you will get there.

And, and so I did.

I had six rounds of chemo and then the last three weeks of treatment, are internal radiation procedures known as brachytherapy.

So I'd have a treatment on a Friday, recover for the weekend, have another treatment on Monday, then recover through the week, and then have another treatment on a Friday.

And end to end it was 56 days.

- As a gynecologic oncologist, I see a fair number of women who are, are young, they're in the prime of their life.

They're often, you know, young mothers.

Radiation for cervical cancer is typically fairly intensive.

So women will typically receive what's called external beam radiation where they receive radiation treatment daily for five to six weeks.

And then they also receive what's called brachytherapy.

Where a device is placed inside the vagina and the cervix to deliver a high dose of radiation to where the cervical cancer is.

- Brachytherapy is incredibly powerful and it's incredibly important.

The tools themselves though they're horrifying.

They look like medieval torture devices.

You wouldn't use these devices on livestock.

I mean they're just, they're just awful.

But they're the tools that are in place and that the doctors have to use.

Women weren't included in clinical trials until 1993.

And so to have devices that were designed before women's participation means that these were never properly designed for a woman's anatomy.

It is incredibly painful, it is incredibly traumatic.

You are in treatment for cancer.

Everything in that moment is do or die.

And so we accept the medicine and the treatment that we're offered because what's the alternative?

Death.

Why is a doctor using a tool from the 1970s in women's health?

When you go down the hall and you look at how men are being treated for prostate health and that equipment looks like the best of modern technology, you can't justify that the need for innovation must happen within cervical health because it is killing women today.

- We've seen studies over and over again that you cannot cure cervical cancer reliably without brachytherapy.

So the part that is the sticking point is that it's a pretty painful procedure.

And the tools that we use, cause a lot of discomfort.

People should not be absconding because it's so intolerable.

It shouldn't be a survival of the strongest or the person who can take the most pain.

I had become incredibly close to my care team and this partnership that I had with Dr Balogun, particularly through radiation and brachytherapy, we had ideas of a different way to design this device together.

While I was still in treatment.

Working at Google, what I saw was the most futuristic technology and its application to advance an entire industry.

And it became very clear to me that there were really obvious simple applications for new technology to start to address some of these gaps that I was seeing in the care system.

It's New York City, these are some of the top research institutions in the world.

And so if the gaps in care exist for women in these health systems, then the quality of care only degrades from there.

And to me that felt like a really grave injustice.

And so I, I promised myself that if I got better and if I got through this, then that would be what this was for.

- Eve spoke up and said, can we do this better?

And I told her, I absolutely know that we can, but first let's get you to remission.

Because I think even during the procedures, her own procedures, she would say, oh, what do you think about this?

And I'd say, let's focus on your treatment.

My job was to get her back home to her two children and her husband, you know, who's wonderful, - Pour and a perfect pour.

Two excellent pours, - Great teamwork, great teamwork.

For me, this cancer could not win.

When we finished, we all breathed the deep sigh of relief with the scans showing no evidence of disease.

And I just felt like 'in your face, cancer, this mom gets to go home.'

You know, 'this mom gets to see all her kids' milestones.'

- And so once I reached remission, once I got healthy, that's when we began to start exploring what does it look like to bring a new medical device to market?

And all that work and research and development together became the foundation of the launch of our company, which is called Mission-Driven Tech.

- Using technology to improve processes.

That's her expertise that she's bringing.

And I have the women's health expertise and we're gonna get it done.

- I never thought in those moments in treatment that it would eventually become an opportunity and it would bring me such fulfillment and purpose and to see my professional self operating in this way, working in this field that's like the coolest thing.

- I'm in Washington DC to meet with Tamika and discover how her cervical cancer journey has become a catalyst for change, not only in her own life but in the lives of many other women.

- I had a boil under my arm and it was very painful.

So I went in and the doctor asked me a simple question.

He was like, when was your last PAP test?

And I was like, Ooh.

I think like three, maybe four years ago.

He gave me a referral.

And at this point in my career I was working on a live news show.

And I remember I had fought like I don't know what to get on the show.

And I remember thinking, I don't have time for this.

Like I don't have time to make this appointment, but for whatever reason I did.

And she touches me by the knee and she says, let's talk about your Pap.

It looks like I have early stage cervical cancer, but in order to save my life I would need a radical hysterectomy.

And that means I'm never gonna be a mom.

It was just the most gorgeous spring day.

And here I was at 25 with you have cervical cancer.

And it literally was like the bottom just fell out.

The cancer had just basically taken over my entire cervix.

And I remember my mom said to me, I'm sorry this is happening, but you just have to save your life.

And that's what I did.

And in order to save my life, I had to lose my fertility.

You're diagnosed, you've gotta hurry up and make decisions.

How are you gonna be treated?

Chemo and radiation, even healing from the surgery it all takes time.

And then one day, if you're lucky, you know you're NED, no evidence of disease and you get to go on with your life.

And it was hard.

I'm not gonna say that it was overnight.

You're clawing to get back to the old you.

You know, I'm very social, I like to throw dinner parties, have cocktails and conversations and my friends would come over, they were like, we're not gonna talk about cancer.

We're gonna bring over food, we're gonna play games.

'cause I love to play games.

And so what would happen is we would have fun and we would be doing all these things and then all of a sudden the conversation would turn to my cancer even though they promised that it wouldn't.

They're like, what happened?

And how?

And so I'm becoming this "expert" about cervical cancer and HPV because I'm learning and I want to tell them.

And then this domino effect is happening.

They're telling other people and they're like, well my friend, she got these abnormal cells and I think it's like pre-cancer and she wants to talk to you.

So now I'm, I didn't know it at the time, but I'm doing peer-to-peer counseling and I'm supporting these people who are friends of friends of friends of friends.

And the next thing I know we're having support groups.

- Sometimes you look at somebody and oh well they've had kids so they'll be fine.

Yep.

But it's the fact that that was taken from me.

I didn't make the choice.

Cancer made the choice for me.

You're creating hope - For those of us who may still be on the fence, you know?

But I didn't wanna have just any type of support group.

It's like, let's talk about, you know, the parts of the female anatomy and what we need to know.

What would you call your below the belt region?

Bonus points if it's in another language or characters.

and let's play Pictionary.

But I changed it and called it Sextionary.

I want you to draw the reproductive system.

Now you're asking too much.

Morgan, I get where you're going, but that looks like a genie's bag.

Like the genie.

She just came out of the bottle.

For me, it was fun.

Every time we'll invite a few people over and we'll play these party games.

And while we're playing these party games, we'll educate about cervical cancer.

We need to learn not only about our bodies, but be empowered about doing the best for our bodies to understand what screenings are available.

So my cancer was initially found by my primary care physician and she said, we see this all the time.

And it was, we see this all the time.

That would become the catalyst for me wanting to do something about this.

But when I created my organization, I did it for a very selfish reason because I didn't want to be, I couldn't be the only one.

I became a survivor the day that I was diagnosed and Cervivor, spelled C-E-R-V-I-V-O-R.

I want people to know that you are a Cervivor.

That you are informed, you are empowered, and most of all you are alive.

And if it comes to it, we'll hold your hand even on the last day.

And I think about Holly, I think about Jillian, I think about Teolita, I think about Becky.

I think about every single one of them.

And I made a promise.

And my promise is that I'm gonna make cancer pay every single day.

It gave me something to do when I felt hopeless.

One part of Cervivor is about the support.

We never want anyone to feel like they're alone.

But the other part of Cervivor is about making your survivorship count.

You've had this happen to you, what do you want to do with it?

So becoming a patient advocate, and not everyone will want to do that.

We have cervical cancer summits, we have groups for different ethnicities.

It really has taken off.

Cervivor truly is a little piece of me that I wanna leave behind and I hope one day that we don't need it because we can end cervical cancer.

- Unexpectedly, Tamika received a life-changing phone call from a member of her organization.

- You could just hear the excitement in her voice.

She said, we have remaining embryos and my husband and I, we want to donate the remaining embryos to you and your husband.

And I was like, what?

Like, say that again.

And I always have something to say and I couldn't speak.

And she was like, I just realized it's April Fool's Day.

I want you to know like this is not a April Fools joke.

I was like, I didn't think it was.

And now I have this amazing baby boy, Chayton.

And he is our survivor baby.

I share him with the entire community.

He literally has aunties around the world Without cervical cancer and without this organization I wouldn't have Chayton.

And so I'm not thankful to cancer for that, but it's a full circle moment of my journey with cervical cancer.

And now I'm a Cervivor and I want people to survive it.

I want them to thrive beyond it.

But I also want no one to ever be diagnosed with it.

- Like so many other women.

Jennifer was busy taking care of her family and had neglected her cervical screening for many years.

- So you know, when you come into the doctor, of course they ask you, when was your last Pap smear?

I said about 1992.

And the look on the doctor's face!

And of course the Pap smear came back abnormal.

So I came in and had a biopsy and then it was, it was cancerous.

And I was just like, okay.

And he said, my office will call you to schedule.

Okay, well you know that next month it was my birthday and then the next month it was my wedding anniversary and my mother's birthday.

And then we went on vacation.

I was diagnosed in July and then before I knew it, it was November.

By that time it had spread.

So we went to the next step, which was surgery.

I was really lucky and it went really well.

They got everything.

Now I'm still under surveillance.

I still go see the doctor right over there in the Women's and Infants, you know, once a year and let them check, make sure everything's still good.

- I hope any female before they have a hysterectomy, if you have any question - ask.

No question is a stupid question when it comes to your body and your health.

- Black women and Hispanic women and people from minoritized backgrounds do not be afraid to get a second opinion.

It's your body.

Especially when it comes to cancer.

The first time we take care of it is the best opportunity we have.

So as the young people say, if the vibes are off - leave.

There are things that are part of the medical infrastructure that make it more difficult for black, Hispanic, native American individuals to access care on the same level as their white counterparts would.

Women in Brooklyn do not survive as well as women in Manhattan.

We also know that Hispanic women are much more likely to develop cervical cancer.

And black women and Hispanic women are much more likely to die from it.

- We have wrongs that need to be righted in this country.

When I look at some women who are black and diagnosed with cervical cancer, similar stage, much healthier than I am, the reason why I'm still here and they're not is because I had access to excellent care.

But we have the unique ability here to change that, to make sure that no one falls in the cracks, that everyone has access and we won't have these gaping disparities.

- So now as a patient service coordinator, what I do is I fast track people with cancer.

I get you in as fast as I can and get all your tests done and put all the information in front of the doctor so they can determine what kind of treatment that you need.

It is a hard job, it's an emotional job, but it's the most rewarding work.

We have counselors, transportation, if you're from out of town, there's lodging, there's grants, there's support groups, there's even a service where if you're in chemo, they will come out and clean your house.

To be able to help people with that is just amazing.

I really think it's made a difference.

- We were looking to hire someone to really dig in there and become part of the community and figure out how to get our word out.

Linda was our first interview and we knew immediately that she had a service oriented heart and that she was committed to reaching women.

So we hired her.

She's been here not very long, but she's already made a huge impact.

- Hi, my name is Ms. Hayes.

I work for the Department of Public Health with the Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program.

And I just want to stop by to give you some flyers, tell y'all information that we provide free.

I'm excited.

I love what I'm, I know it's a purpose for everything that I went through, but right now I'm more focusing on the ladies that can get screened and not have to go through what I went through.

Thank you so much.

Thank, thank you.

Yes ma'am.

Thank you.

And I just thank God for this position.

I know this is the right time and the right place and I know I'm gonna make a difference.

Whatever I can do, I'm willing to help.

- It's clear that along with important medical research, cervical cancer survivors play a vital role in this elimination journey.

I'm here in Washington DC, the nation's capital, where advocates are coming together this week to shape policy that could change the lives of all American women.

- Cervivor is proud to be one of the partners that are working to help eliminate cervical cancer through the round tables.

And we share our expertise as patients.

And so for me and my leadership team to be able to work not only with the White House, but all the amazing organizations that have come together to catalyze and put our thoughts together on how to work together to really make the goal of eliminating cervical cancer a reality.

Because why wouldn't we?

We have a cancer we can eliminate.

I don't want people to think of cervical cancer and just think of my story or think of Eve McDavid's story.

I want them to think that this happens to this woman in rural America, this woman in East Africa, this woman who is very wealthy in Texas.

It can happen to anyone.

We can eliminate cervical cancer.

If everyone is all in, we can do it.

- It's just a matter of time and it's a matter of political will.

- I think it's very possible, especially if we work together.

If we continue to build our partnerships and pool those resources, I have no doubt we can eliminate it.

- I don't think there is another cancer that we can say you can prevent it, you can treat it, and you can cure it.

And so to have so many solutions that already exist in place, that gives me so much hope.

And now it's okay, what are those solutions and can they be better?

- There's a long way to go of course.

But to be able to have a roadmap in front of us and to look to colleagues around the world who are making bold, ambitious steps every day towards that future is really what I get very excited about.

- I mean, I think that there'll be a generation of women, it'll be unfathomable to them that there was a previous generation of women that got a Pap every single year.

- And I think now toward the end of my career, what I see is really people coming together.

But we are not there yet.

We are starting this journey.

- In the time that you've been watching this film, over 30 women will have lost their battle with cervical cancer.

But we can prevent the lives of women being cut short unnecessarily.

This is the most extraordinary health story of our time.

The world is rising up and the tide is turning.

- It's faces that come to you.

Faces of women who came late who are no longer there, faces of women who came early and I meet them on the street and they're still alive.

That means that something can be done.

- Together.

We can save the lives of millions of women.

So let's dare to dream of a world without cancer because this Moonshot is within reach.

So you might be wondering, what can I do to help eliminate cervical cancer?

Well, there's a lot you can do.

All of us can support getting children vaccinated against HPV.

Children with an HPV vaccination will be protected against cervical cancer and other HPV-related cancers.

We can also support all women to get screened for HPV and cervical cancer.

And then support them in getting treatment if and when it's needed.

- And so with time, we find our place.

Or at least a moment to look fearlessly at the sky and know that we're here, that we're fine and pure of heart, Oh, gentle mind and bridges cross like waters - Flow.