Carrie Ann Inaba and P&G Give Hope

GIVE HOPE, is a special partnership between P&G and the National Breast Cancer Foundation to help increase women's chances of survival from breast cancer through early detection. Yes, I've been blogging a lot about cancer recently, but as you know it's important so please listen up. A special edition of the P&G brandSAVER coupon booklet will be included in newspapers across the country Sunday, September 27. For every coupon redeemed from the booklet, a two-cent donation will be made to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. A total of 3 billion coupons will be distributed and this is an uncapped donation solely based on the number of coupons redeemed. So, get clipping!

Dancing with the Stars judge Carrie Ann Inaba has joined this GIVE HOPE program too and kindly granted me a phone interview to talk about her involvement and the Fall season of her popular reality dance show. Overall, she was really easy to talk to and a thoughtful speaker. Her personality and warmth came through over the phone even.

The press release says that you have a personal experience with cancer, can you tell me about that?Carrie Ann: "Yes, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer last summer. She had stage 3, a mastectomy and she had radiation and now she is doing well and is recovering and a clean bill of health right now. We are very very grateful. She was actually treated at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, which was wonderful because she used to be a cancer researcher when she was in college and it’s funny how she sort of has gone full circle back to Sloan Kettering and got to experience what they do up-close."

You probably grew up pretty aware of the disease then?"No, you know not really. It’s not something you really bring up all the time at the dinner table unfortunately, and that’s kind of sad because we should be talking about it more. It’s important for us to be talking about cancer and breast cancer and raising awareness and increasing education, so that’s why I’m here with P&G right now working with them to help raise awareness."

So how did you get involved with Give Hope?"Well, because of my mom’s situation. When something like that happens to someone you love you realize what’s important and what’s not important. Being that in the last four or five years my life has changed greatly with the success of Dancing With the Stars and all the projects I’ve been working on a lot of opportunities have opened up and you start to wonder which ones you chose to do and who you want to be in this world. I think for me it became very evident that I needed to give back in as many ways that I could and since this is a topic that hits very close to home and that it is something that I could speak to with great passion and know what it feels like and have compassion for people going through it and people who are afraid to go through it. This is something that I thought would be good for me to be working on and the Give Hope program is just wonderful because it’s really trying to help educate people. Our goal is to educate 5 million woman and to raise their awareness about taking care of themselves, their monthly self exams, making sure they get mammograms, not being afraid to go in and make those doctor appointments. We have built a program that is online http://www.mypinkplan.com/ and it allows you to customize your own reminder program, so that you make sure you don’t forget about these exams and walks you through the process. It’s really good because right now the internet is accessible for everybody, you obviously know, and it’s a wonderful tool for communicating to people and reaching out to people and building a community and building a group of friends that you might not actually have in your physical neighborhood."

What P&G limited edition pink product are you most looking forward to getting?"All of them? (Laughs) Probably. I’m a coupon-cutter always have been and always will be and they are sending out more than 3 billion coupons and for every one redeemed two cents goes to the National Breast Cancer Foundation."

This is the 9th season of Dancing with the Stars? I remember watching it in the first season I can’t believe it’s been so long."Actually, what’s great is we do it twice a year, so we aren’t all nine years older than when it started luckily. (Laughs) I’m just so grateful that people still love our show."

Are there any surprises in store for this coming season?"This season has got a lot of surprises; we have changes in the judging format. We have a relay dance where we for the first time ranked them ourselves, the judges and put them in order of who we thought was best when they danced side by side, which is very new and I think it went across very well and we enjoyed ourselves. I think it’s good to start comparing then right off the get go like that. Plus, this season I think episodes 5-7 we are going to have double eliminations, which is a big deal. We also have this new thing where the judges, while they (contestants) are dancing we are going to let them know they are out of that section right now. It’s hard to explain, you’ll have to watch it."

Which contestants are you most excited about this season?"Because it’s still so new I’m excited right now for a lot of the contestants. I like Louie Vito because I think he’s really engaging to watch and completely a surprise, I think Donnie Osmond is interesting and I think Aaron Carter and maybe Mark Dacascos is very interesting. As for the girls go, loved watching Mya, but completely memorized and intrigued to see how Kelly (Osbourne) does. Super shocked by Joanna Krupa she was good, oh and the swimmer. See there’s a lot. (Laughs) Each week there is a lot going on."

Thank you very much and I’m glad you are getting involved in this cause, that’s awesome."Thank you so much that means a lot to me, I appreciate it."

3 comments

  1. A little quote from your article for intro: "Yes, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer last summer. She had stage 3, a vasectomy and..."

    A vasectomy??? It's very possible that you mistyped/misinterpreted the term (or maybe Miss C. did), but, to my knowledge, vasectomies are done on men, not women. :-)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasectomy

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  2. I think that's a typo. I'm sure she meant mastectomy.

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  3. Correct, I meant mastectomy but my spell check went haywire. Fixed now.

    Thank you!

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