"I never in a million years thought my life would take the path it has taken," says Dr. Fontham. "I was diagnosed with polio in Crowley the year before the first polio vaccine came out, and I had to go to a hospital in Baton Rouge." She was seven years old, and her grandfather was dying of cancer back in Crowley. Her mother had to divide her time between the two.
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An LSU graduate and fanatic Tigers fan, Dr. Fontham started her career at LSU Health Sciences Center as a Research Associate in the School of Medicine's Department of Pathology. Her research took her from the Andes in Columbia to the nation's capitol, with far-reaching consequences.
"To develop lung cancer as a lifetime never-smoker is something that should not happen. We know that tobacco smoke is by far and away the biggest cause of lung cancer, and non-smokers were involuntarily breathing the tobacco smoke of others."
The research and the laws that resulted have saved thousands of lives and not just from cancer. Her pathology colleague, Dr. Jack Strong, was the first to link cigarette smoke to heart disease. The number of lives saved from cardiovascular disease is significantly larger than from lung cancer.
In 2008, Dr. Fontham was installed as President of the American Cancer Society during its National Assembly Meeting in New York City. The ACS is the largest not-for-profit organization in this country and one of the largest, if not the largest, in the world.