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On July 21, VCU Massey Cancer Center’s Facts & Faith Fridays call highlighted the need for preventive strategies, routine screenings and effective communication to successfully reduce the burden of cancer and other disease. Additionally, this session featured multiple guests from different academic levels who shared their pathways to a future in medicine.

Erica Phillips, M.D., a primary care physician at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, shared her medical background and discussed what inspired her to practice medicine, including a passion for helping prevent disease through clinical interventions such as cancer screenings and promoting healthy lifestyle habits.

“The big C that we recognized before COVID and will continue to be the big C afterward doesn’t need to be,” Phillips said, stressing the importance of routine screenings that can detect cancer before it develops or in its earliest, most treatable stages.

“Cancer survivors are survivors because they were able to access excellent care in the treatment of their cancer,” Phillips said, calling herself the “gatekeeper” between patients who have cancer and their oncology care.

Phillips addressed the fact that we will soon begin to observe increased rates of cancer due to delayed screenings caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and underlined the need for medical providers to allow patients to feel heard in the clinical setting as a means to effectively increase adherence to routine screening, prevention and treatment guidelines.

Watch the July webinar to learn more about cancer screenings and careers in medicine from Massey's Facts & Faith Fridays participants.

OreOluwa Comfort Aluko, a second-year student at the VCU School of Medicine with a focus in health disparities who is also a participant in the Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials: Clinical Investigator Pathway Program, joined the Facts & Faith Fridays session to talk about her career journey in medicine and what steered her down that path.

As an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland, she studied psychology before ultimately realizing becoming a physician would allow her to have the greatest impact in improving health disparities.

“I wanted to empower patients to live healthier lives by arming them with knowledge,” Aluko said. “I wanted to be in a position to help those who may not realize they needed the help. That’s where my interest in medicine and psychology merged…Having conversations in a way that people are able to digest the information makes them more open to discussing things that they wouldn’t have in the first place.”

Johana Johnson, a rising senior at Deep Run High School, participated in this summer’s cohort of the ACS Summer Healthcare Experience (SHE) in Oncology Program at Massey. During the call, Johnson shared about her experience with the program and how it influenced her career goals moving forward.

“The biggest impact I want to have is to help the less fortunate in other countries who are struggling with their health,” Johnson said.

The SHE Program at Massey aims to introduce Virginia high school student leaders who identify as female to the vast career and leadership opportunities in oncology. The two-week virtual experience includes a series of workshops, panels and hands-on research activities.

Massey director Robert A. Winn, M.D., also took a moment during the call to address the importance of an ongoing multi-center interventional study of a blood test for multiple cancer types that could be a gamechanger for the early detection of disease. Massey is a participating center for this national clinical trial.

“There is a powerful tool being used out there that we really should be thinking about its efficacy of being able to be used particularly in African American populations,” Winn said.

To see the upcoming schedule and register for future Facts & Faith Fridays webinars, visit our website.

Written by: Blake Belden