Rose Kushner started the Women's―now the Rose Kushner Breast Cancer Advisory Center― after she discovered her own breast cancer in 1974. Her first of four books about breast cancer, Breast Cancer: A Personal History and Investigative Report (Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich), was published in 1975 followed by Why Me? (Saunders Press / Holt Reinhardt, 1982) and Alternatives: New Developments in the War Against Breast Cancer (Warner Books, 1985). This internet edition of her booklet "If You've Thought About Breast Cancer..." is the updated edition of the eighth in the series started in 1979.

In 1980 President Jimmy Carter appointed Rose to a six-year term on the National Cancer Advisory Board of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). She co-founded the National Alliance of Breast Cancer Organizations (NABCO) and was a member of the National Task Force on Breast Cancer of the American Cancer Society. As the patient-representative member of the 1979 Consensus Conference of the NCI on surgical treatment of breast cancer, Rose was responsible for achieving the recommendation that biopsy should be separated from treatment, allowing women who are newly diagnosed to have time to get second opinions, to consider all their treatment alternatives and to participate in the decision-making process.

Rose received many writing awards for her books and articles in newspapers, national magazines and medical journals. Her promotion of breast cancer research while a member of the National Cancer Advisory Board and her contributions to breast cancer education and patient advocacy won her many national honors. Among them were the Gold Medal of Honor from the American Cancer Society in 1987 and the James Ewing Layman's Award from the Society of Surgical Oncologists in 1990.

When she died in January 1990, Rose was lobbying for state and federal legislation concerning breast cancer, including Medicare and private insurance coverage for mammography screening and increased funding for breast cancer research. Her pioneering work in political action helped inspire the National Breast Cancer Coalition’s wonderfully successful campaign to increase breast cancer research funding.

A legion of women replaced Rose to advocate ending the scourge of breast cancer. Their voices heard in the halls of the Congress, White House, National Cancer Institute and Department of Defense (yes, even the Department of Defense), remarkably expanded budgets for breast cancer research and permanently changed national priorities for confronting this terrible disease.