“Survival Is Not the End of the Journey”
The ASCO Voices stage is known for giving members of the oncology community a chance to share their stories with the world. This year, five speakers took the spotlight, including three Black women whose lives connect with cancer in very different ways: a patient who became a strong clinical trial advocate, a young biomedical scientist who survived a brain tumor in Nigeria, and a radiation oncologist now working on medical device innovation.
Their stories made one thing clear: to achieve real equity in cancer care, we need to listen closely to people’s lived experiences, not just look at statistics.
Megan-Claire Chase, a cancer advocate, speaker, and writer, did not mince words when she took the stage. “Many Black patients don’t distrust clinical trials because they don’t understand the science,” she stated plainly. “They distrust them because we understand the history. Stories like Henrietta Lacks and the Tuskegee syphilis study … that’s not distant history. It lives in family conversations.”
For Chase, medical history is a living part of her community’s memory. Her connection to oncology started long before her own diagnosis. She was called a “miracle baby” because she was born three months early after her mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer during pregnancy. Growing up with a biracial registered nurse as her mother, she learned early to know what was normal for her body and to stand up for herself as a patient by asking questions, switching doctors, and speaking up when needed.
That willingness to speak up saved her life. For more than two years, Chase went from doctor to doctor, looking for answers to strange symptoms like weight changes and hair loss only on the left side of her body. Each visit left her feeling ignored and embarrassed. Then, two months after her 39th birthday, she found a hard lump near her underarm. The diagnosis was Stage IIA invasive lobular breast cancer.
Getting through the tough treatment was just the first challenge. When serious and unexpected side effects made her stop her post-treatment medications, her oncologist told her something frightening: “There are no more options for you.”
“I was flabbergasted,” Chase recalled. “I’m like, ‘What do you mean there are no more post-treatment options for me? Weren’t there people that look like me in the clinical trials?’ And that’s when the pieces of the puzzle started fitting together … Clinical trials are not the enemy—that lack of representation is.”
When Chase tried to join a clinical trial, strict eligibility rules left her feeling rejected and ignored. She called on the ASCO community to focus on what she calls The 4 As:
“Please, as you leave here today, remember: see us, believe us, listen to us, and more importantly, include us,” Chase urged. “Because there is nothing without us.”
Boluwatife Adeola Aofolaju, BSc, spoke in a pre-recorded presentation, sharing her perspective as both a biomedical scientist and a young brain tumor survivor.
Aofolaju’s story started in her last year of university, when she had constant headaches she thought were just stress. Then a sudden seizure changed everything and led to a brain tumor diagnosis. Her life soon became filled with neurosurgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and many scans.
When her treatments ended, her community celebrated. But for Aofolaju, finishing treatment was just the start of a much lonelier and more confusing time.
“Physically, I mean, I was alive. Everybody could see that I was okay physically,” Aofolaju shared. “But mentally and emotionally, I was struggling … I dealt with memory lapses, I dealt with mental fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and my body—my body changed in ways that I could not recognize.”
Steroids changed her weight, caused severe facial acne, and made her skin much darker. She struggled with intense anxiety and withdrew from others, even as people expected her to go back to how she was before cancer.
While working as a patient advocate with the Dorcas Cancer Foundation in Nigeria, Aofolaju realized her experience was part of a bigger problem. Global oncology is good at diagnosing and treating cancer, but often fails to support patients after treatment ends.
“We focus a lot on diagnosis and treatment,” she said. “But we don’t talk enough about what comes after … For me, there was no structured support. There was no guidance on how to deal with the emotional weight that came with surviving cancer … I was surviving, but I didn’t know how to live that life.”
Aofolaju asked the audience to rethink what it means to have a successful outcome, pointing out that medical tests do not always show what survivors feel inside. She said real cancer care should include required mental health support and clear survivorship plans. “Because beyond the scan,” she said, “there’s a life that still needs support. There’s a life that still needs understanding.”
Dr. Oninye Balogun, a radiation oncologist and medical device innovator, turned the focus to care providers. She explained how support and confidence from others can change the course of a career and even a whole field.
Dr. Balogun traced her journey back to her second day at a rigorous new high school in Long Island. Terrified to walk into her new English class, she froze at the door when she heard her teacher reading an assessment essay aloud to the class. They were Balogun’s words.
“In that moment, before I had even stepped into the classroom, she made a young Black girl suddenly transplanted to the suburbs of Long Island feel seen,” Dr. Balogun reflected. “She read my words as if they mattered—as if I mattered.”
That moment changed her life. With her teacher’s guidance on the speech and debate team, Balogun found her voice. She held onto that support through college, medical school, and a tough residency, using it to guide her when others doubted she belonged.
In July 2024, the sudden death of her close friend shook Dr. Balogun to her core. It forced a profound re-evaluation of her life’s work: If I am still here, that means I still have meaningful work to do.
She found her answer in medical device innovation. Dr. Balogun had been developing radiotherapy solutions for low- and middle-income countries and rural areas. To fully commit, she had to take a big, scary step. She listened to her late mentor’s advice, called her department chair, left her secure job, and joined a year-long fellowship for physician innovators.
Dr. Balogun left the ASCO audience with three questions designed to turn personal gratitude into systemic legacy:
“Borrowed courage is not about dependence; it’s about connection,” Balogun concluded. “It’s a way for us to bolster one another, because none of us gets through this life fueled solely by our own confidence … It creates a chain, a legacy. It’s a way for us to lift one another higher than any of us could ever climb alone.”
Together, these three stories offer a powerful guide for the future of oncology. Megan-Claire Chase calls for changes to clinical trial systems. Boluwatife Aofolaju urges us to support patients after treatment ends. Dr. Oninye Balogun shows that the courage to create these changes is something we can and should share with each other.
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