ASCO Humanitarian Award recipient seeks to help those ‘forgotten’ in cancer research
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Satish Gopal, MD, MPH, feels honored to receive this year’s ASCO Humanitarian Award.
However, he acknowledged the type of work for which he is being recognized has always felt “selfish” to him.
“It truly is just work that I love and that makes me happy,” Gopal told Healio.
Global efforts
Whatever motivated Gopal’s career choices, the results have improved the welfare and health of countless people with cancer around the world.
Gopal serves as director of the NCI Center for Global Health. He oversees the development of collaborative efforts with various governmental and nongovernmental organizations to support cancer research, promote science-based cancer control, and generate research capacity in low-and middle-income countries.
Prior to joining NCI, Gopal served as cancer program director for The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill collaboration with the Malawi Ministry of Health.
In this capacity, Gopal led an NIH-funded research program devoted to epidemiologic, clinical and translational studies of lymphoma and HIV-related malignancies in Africa. He also directed a multidisciplinary cancer research portfolio aimed at addressing several of the most common cancers in the region, including cervical, breast and esophageal cancers.
“I really do believe that there are people around the world affected by cancer who have been utterly forgotten by the cancer research and control enterprise,” Gopal said. “When you work in some of the clinics I have, that is very obvious in a way that it sometimes isn’t when you work at the NCI and have the good fortune to be surrounded by the resources we have.”
In addition to his work directly involving patients with cancer, Gopal has been a major force in training a new generation of researchers around the world.
He has mentored more than 30 early-career U.S. and African pre- and post-doctoral cancer researchers, many of whom have gone on to hold academic positions in global oncology at NCI-designated cancer centers, academic institutions in Africa or other international organizations. This is one of the aspects of Gopal’s career of which he is especially proud.
“I think I’ve been able to serve as an effective role model and have helped attract very bright young people from Africa and the U.S. to cancer research careers,” he said. “I’ve been able to support them during critical early phases of their careers and enable their success under challenging conditions.”
Gopal also is proud to have opened some doors in terms of cancer research participation to people in Africa who otherwise might not have had the chance to be involved.
In fact, he emphasized his work has been “enabled by the generosity” of patients and colleagues in Africa.
“The work we did in Malawi and that we continue to do at the NCI was about inviting people to participate in the cancer research enterprise who have been more or less forgotten by the cancer research enterprise,” he said.
Early motivations
Gopal had early exposure to socioeconomic disparities. As a young boy, he witnessed children living in poverty when visiting family in India.
“I remember seeing kids who looked just like me but had very little,” Gopal said. “I had the reality of stark global disparities imprinted on my brain repeatedly at a very young age. That has always felt like a strong motivating force.”
Gopal had another pivotal experience after finishing his residency, when he lived and worked in Tanzania. During this time, he said, he became aware of the looming global health threat posed by cancer.
“I really came to understand how big a problem cancer was — and that it was going to be a key emerging public health threat for years to come,” he said.
At that time, cancer as a global health problem was not necessarily being widely discussed or addressed, Gopal said.
“While I was living in Tanzania, I was struck by how few people there were who were thinking about cancer in these environments in a very serious way,” he said. “That really motivated me to pursue my subsequent career trajectory.”
Visibility, investment and rigor
Gopal said he is especially pleased to be recognized by ASCO alongside fellow Humanitarian Award recipient Miriam Mutebi, MD, MsC, FACS, a surgical oncologist with whom Gopal has worked closely and admired for several years.
Moving forward, Gopal said he would like to see efforts to reduce cancer disparities in low-income areas receive the same attention and resources as other aspects of oncology research and care.
“This problem still needs the kind of visibility, status, investment, excellence, and rigor that the rest of cancer research enjoys,” he said. “It’s often still far too easy to relegate this kind of work to a side project that is adjacent to ‘real’ cancer research.”
Gopal said he hopes the future will bring continued visibility, commitment to research and innovation to benefit communities that are often overlooked in the current cancer space.
“It’s really important to look at ourselves in the mirror as a community and ask to what degree we’re willing to tolerate these stark inequities going forward,” he said.
For more information:
Satish Gopal, MD, MPH, can be reached at nciglobalhealth@mail.nih.gov.
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