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Through LCC’s Patient Navigation program that launched in 2010, Latino cancer patients receive one-on-one guidance through the treatment process, from diagnosis to end of life. More than 310

patients with 40 different kinds of cancer have been “navigated” through the program. LCC’s support groups, financial services and distribution of wigs, bras and prostheses have helped

hundreds more. When Linda Cordero’s 1-year-old boy, Frederick, was diagnosed with a rare childhood eye cancer, she called LCC “in very desperate need. We were behind on our rent. We had no

money to take him through treatment,” she says. “Ysabel offered us gas cards to drive him [to the San Francisco clinic] three times a week. That was a blessing to us.” Duron has developed

national health networks where none existed before. In 2008, Latinas Contra Cancer convened the first National Latino Cancer Summit, bringing together health care providers, researchers and

community-based agencies — including from Puerto Rico, Mexico and Spain — to network and share knowledge. (The fourth Summit in 2014 will look at impacts of the Affordable Care Act on

Latinos with cancer.) The 9-year-old Health Bingo program teaches thousands about breast, cervical, prostate, colorectal and lung cancer from Orlando to San Francisco. She’s also always

forging new partnerships. Among the most recent are collaborations with major universities including UCSF, Stanford and the Georgetown Lombardi Cancer Research Center, where researchers are

conducting a study on breast cancer patients and their caregivers. Another, with the Stanford Cancer Institute, aims to build coding that makes cancer data simpler to access and analyze. LCC

is even working with San Jose high school students to create a mobile app to educate Latino youth about cancer. Duron is now committed to reshaping federal policy, law and funding. An

advocate for extending the Affordable Care Act to cover more immigrants, Duron believes “everyone deserves the best treatment they can get when they’re ill.” Earlier this year, she pushed to

get language written into the immigration bill that would allow insurance companies to create a special lower-cost product for undocumented immigrants. “They’re going to stay here, they

need health care,” she says, so “give them a tool they can pay for.” Behind the scenes, Duron was appointed in 2011 to the federal Interagency Breast Cancer and Environment Research

Coordinating Committee. Her recommendations to increase cancer research on minority women made it into last year’s State of Science on Breast Cancer report delivered to Department of Health

and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. After her own experience fighting, surviving and “putting a human face on the big C,” Duron’s great empathy for cancer patients has made her

utterly clear on her bigger purpose in the second stage of life. “I was meant to do this — to be a voice for an underserved, underrepresented population without a voice.”