Thoracic oncologist on finding your ‘tribe,’ not giving up during difficult times
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Editor’s Note: This is part two of a three-part Healio Exclusive series on Women to Watch. Part one can be viewed here.
As a young child, Coral Olazagasti, MD, participated in church community service with her mother in Puerto Rico. Fast forward years later where she continued to feed that passion by joining community medical mission trips in Guatemala and Haiti.
“That’s when my love for medicine and a desire to pursue my medical degree started — I felt a need to help other people,” Olazagasti, assistant professor of medical oncology at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, told Healio. “I started with internal medicine but wasn’t certain what specialty to pursue after that. When I later added an elective in hematology oncology, I felt all the feelings that I had when I participated in community service — a feeling of purposefulness. That’s why I chose oncology as a medical career.”
In 2020, Olazagasti made the move from New York to Miami with her husband and children to pursue a medical career where patients looked like her and spoke her language.
“As a Latina, I wanted to get back to my roots and provide cancer-related care to a population that is largely Hispanic while focusing my research on disparities in cancer care, specifically among the Hispanic population,” she said.
Olazagasti still feels the calling to get back into local community outreach and service and is working to incorporate that calling into her position at University of Miami.
“I want to participate in community outreach initiatives for the Hispanic population,” she said. “I plan to pursue a master’s in public health so that I can get back into that type of work.”
Lung cancer screening
During residency at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, Olazagasti observed that many of the patients seen in clinic who were diagnosed with lung cancer had stage IV disease.
“I asked my attending if he ever saw patients who were diagnosed during routine CT screening for lung cancer,” she said. “Unfortunately, he said he didn’t see many patients diagnosed by screening, and so that made me wonder what the screening patterns were at my institution.”
Olazagasti looked further into the screening practices and found that only 26% of the patients who met eligibility criteria were referred to screening. That led her to create a 9-month educational program for co-residents and attendings that focused on the importance of lung cancer screening.
“I later conducted a follow-up post-analysis and found that the rate for screening increased dramatically from about 26% to 67% after my colleagues underwent the educational program,” she said. “That made me realize that physicians were not aware of screening, or this was not really at the forefront of their minds before the program.”
Olazagasti then went on to research the screening patterns among patients at high risk for lung cancer and those diagnosed with lung cancer, to see if they had been screened and whether screening led to their actual diagnosis.
“I again found that screening patterns were suboptimal, with only 4% of patients who met screening eligibility criteria and were eventually diagnosed with lung cancer underwent screening. There is a real need for a national lung cancer screening education and promotion program,” she said. “In addition to this, I wanted to understand the lung cancer screening patterns among minorities and found disparities not only in eligibility for Hispanics, but also disparities for those who met eligibility criteria. I have now joined both of my passions — lung cancer screening and disparities in cancer care — into one field and am focusing on lung cancer screening primarily in the Hispanic and Black populations.”
Olazagasti said her goal is to see that every eligible individual is screened for lung cancer, especially those in the Hispanic community.
“We can overcome the barriers to screening due to financial limitations, transportation issues or lack of awareness,” she said. “We know that Hispanics have worse overall survival from lung cancer because they are diagnosed at later stages. My goal is to find those people — whether that is at my institution in Miami or elsewhere — and promote lung cancer screening to ensure that they are aware that it is available to them.”
‘Colorful way of being’
During her residency in New York, Olazagasti recalled the racism she experienced from her peers and patients.
“Coming from Puerto Rico, I was under the impression that because we are a U.S. territory things wouldn’t change much when I graduated from medicine and decided to pursue residency in New York, but I found that it was a difficult change to go through,” she said. “I was made fun of because of my accent and the way that I pronounced words. I am also a very passionate person and was told during training to ‘bottle my enthusiasm.’ This was something that I carried through to my fellowship. I was told that people had a hard time understanding me by some of the individuals who should have been leaders and help guide me in the field, which was very discouraging. I didn’t feel like I fit in.”
That discouragement almost led her to quit her career in medicine altogether.
Until she met Narjust Florez, MD, associate director of the Cancer Equity Program and thoracic medical oncologist at Lowe Center for Thoracic Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and a Healio Women in Oncology Peer Perspective board member.
“Dr. Florez completely changed my perspective. She has been instrumental in my career,” Olazagasti said. “When I met her in 2019 at the World Lung Cancer Conference in Barcelona, my career pivoted. I didn’t have a mentor to help guide me in the work that I was interested in doing in the disparities space, but she was able to fill that role and became a dear friend and mentor. I am now a part of the Florez Lab and I love the work that I do with her. I was able to find a community of people that looked like me, spoke like me and shared my enthusiasm and colorful way of being.”
Olazagasti said meeting Dr. Florez was instrumental in her finding her voice, so she could keep pushing forward and use her experience and platform to keep fighting for minority patients.
“Finding my tribe saved my career,” she said. “You may think that because you haven’t found the right mentorship within your institution that there’s nowhere else to go. But what I found is that you can find mentors and support outside of your institution,” she said. “Social media can help you connect with other people who have similar interests and similar backgrounds. Networking and finding your community is rewarding. It lets you know that you are not alone and that the work that you are doing is very important, and to not give up because everyone has a purpose within medicine.
“There is greatness to be achieved, so don’t give up,” Olazagasti added. “Find your tribe. Surround yourself with people who can promote you, say your name in a room and provide opportunities for you — individuals who push you to be a better scientist, a better physician and better person overall.”
For more information:
Coral Olazagasti, MD, can be reached at cxo379@med.miami.edu.
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