Padma Lakshmi helped the Endometriosis Foundation of America celebrate its annual holiday gala in New York last week.
Padma helped found the foundation with Tamar Seckin after her own experience with Endometriosis.
Held at the Morgan Library and Museum, the gala helped raise money for the foundation’s continuing work to provide hope to women suffering from the debilitating effects of Endometriosis and associated diseases. In contrast to the enigmatic picture often painted of Endometriosis as an incurable condition, the EFA firmly believes that every stage of the disease is treatable with the correct surgical techniques. However, early diagnosis and timely intervention are crucial.
The EFA’s mission further addresses societal prejudices and misinformation about Endometriosis in the medical community. Through combining research and education, we are here to help the women who suffer from this disease by spreading awareness and actively working to find a permanent cure.
“Endometriosis is something that’s like a web, like a vapor, like weeds in a garden that permeate everything, and stain everything,” says Padma. "I hope that endometriosis and the education about it and the treatment of it evolves, and also the marketing of it, that’s where I come in, that is what I can do.
“I was operated on at Mount Sinai, at Cedars-Sinai. These are great hospitals, and yet even I as a college educated women had to go through what I went through, and that is what made me start the foundation with Tamer. Because I believed not only in what he did, what other people like him could do and were not given the platform to do. Tamer has to take his own instruments sometimes to the hospital because they do not have them for him.
“Beyond all of the improvements and medical advancements… I would like to see a poster in every women’s bathroom, in every locker room, in every college, in every high school, in every restaurant talking about the symptoms of endometriosis, just like that choking poster that you see in restaurants. I would like to see educational curriculum change so that when you learn about your body and you have human sexuality courses in high school you learn about the symptoms of endometriosis. I would like to see Procter & Gamble put literature on the back of every Tampax box about endometriosis. These are the things that I would like to see so that my younger sisters in college today and tomorrow do not have to go through what I went through. Please help me. Thank you.”
Find out more here.
