Contributor

Elizabeth Chabner Thompson, M.D.

Founder, BFFL Co (www.bfflco.com), a company devoted to improving patient experience

Dr. Elizabeth Chabner Thompson learned early in her career that it sometimes takes a change in perspective to bring things into focus. While in her last year of medical school at Johns Hopkins in 1993, she decided to devote her career to curing those with cancer. When her mother developed breast cancer that same year, and Elizabeth had her first experience as doctor and caregiver, she became determined to help women just like her mother. She completed her residency in
Radiation Oncology and also received a Master’s Degree in Public Health.

In 1998, Elizabeth moved with her banker husband to New York, where she began work as a Radiation Oncologist while raising their
growing family and pursuing her love of sports, particularly marathon running and open water swimming.

In 2006, after years of breast surveillance, biopsies, and endless consultations with genetic counselors because of family history, Elizabeth’s perspective once again changed when she underwent prophylactic double mastectomy and breast reconstruction. The experience of recovering from this surgery and the interactions with her physicians led her to begin working in the reconstructive surgery field, helping other women with the difficult decision-making process and recovery from breast surgery.

In 2011, Dr. Chabner Thompson founded BFFL Co (“Best Friends for Life”), a company dedicated to the development and marketing of modern recovery products and services. In the past two years, BFFL Co has launched over a dozen recovery products for different surgeries and medical conditions, including a line of recovery and surgical bras and other garments sold under the company’s Masthead™ brand.

Dr. Chabner Thompson has taught Medical Terminology at New York’s Lehman College and contributed as a medical correspondent for CBS NY. She has been on the alumni boards of both the Harvard School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and has published numerous papers on the subject of breast cancer and radiation therapy, including her co-authored paper An 8-Year Experience of Direct-To-Implant Breast Reconstruction, which was published in a peer review journal in February 2011. In 2012, Dr. Chabner Thompson won the American Cancer Society Ally Award.

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