Never say never. This lesson has never been more relevant than it is this year. To fully grasp its significance, we need to journey back nearly a decade, to when I embarked on a career in medicine, with a focus on women’s health. During my formative years in medical school, what ignited a passion in me was the opportunity to care for women, offering guidance and support during some of their most joyous and challenging times, such as childbirth or a cancer diagnosis. One of my clearest memories is telling my classmates that I chose Obstetrics & Gynecology because I “never wanted to take care of men.” While this statement might seem callous and isn’t entirely accurate—since caring for women often involves ensuring the well-being of their families, including men—it reflected my deep commitment to women’s health. As both a doctor and a woman, the bond I share with my patients continues to inspire me in my clinical practice.
This past year, as I transitioned into a clinician-researcher role with ACHIEVE, my focus was on engaging the right stakeholders, acquiring essential skills, ensuring sound study design, and completing data collection to answer my research question: “What are the strategies that increase access to cervical cancer screening for women in northern Ghana?” Never did I imagine that my data would reveal the significant role men play in women’s access to cervical cancer screening. I realized that the next logical step was to engage men to identify effective strategies for supporting women’s access to these life saving screenings.
Initially, I resisted the idea of shifting my focus to men as a women’s health doctor and researcher. I kept returning to the data, hoping to find another significant area directly related to women that I could pursue. However, I eventually embraced this new direction, amending my IRB protocol to include men, and I am now finishing data collection. I am hopeful that this foundational data will support an upcoming R21 application aimed at increasing men’s support in women’s access to cervical cancer screening and care.
I knew that this Fogarty year would be life-changing, expecting it to be due to new research skills, unparalleled mentorship, and new relationships with other budding leaders in global health research. However, one of the most profound changes has been the humbling reminder that in research, as in life, we should “never say never.”