In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, this week’s episode of The Cancer Letter Podcast features three oncology leaders whose research focuses on identifying and solving health disparities specifically in the Latinx community.
Ruben A. Mesa, Amelie Ramirez, and Luis Carvajal Carmona spoke about the concrete impact of federal policy stances on cancer outcomes in Latinx patients.
Mesa, who is president of the Advocate Health Cancer National Service Line, president of the Atrium Health Levine Cancer, and executive director of the Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Comprehensive Cancer Center, said that his mother recently celebrated her 15th anniversary as a breast cancer survivor.
“Just fantastic to be able to celebrate with her,” Mesa said. “And I reflected on why was it that I was able to celebrate with her as a survivor and not be here sad that I had lost my mother to breast cancer many years ago?”
Mesa identified two key drivers: advances driven from advances in cancer surgery, radiation, and medical therapies, and the fact that his mother’s cancer was caught early.
“Cancer was caught early, [which is] such a crucial piece,” Mesa said. “And at the point in her arc, she was already at that point when she had cancer, she was a U.S. citizen. She had insurance. She was employed. But if she had been lacking those things, maybe her cancer would not have been caught early. She could have had a late-stage presentation that she may not have had the other aspects in terms of health that she might've had otherwise.”
These challenges are not new. But changes in federal policy after President Donald Trump’s inauguration are exacerbating the problem.
“Immigration status had always been a bit of a concern, but it's a much greater concern when there is a fear of a very aggressive stance in terms of trying to find individuals that are undocumented,” Mesa said.
Mesa is also the senior vice president of Advocate Health, vice dean for cancer programs and the Charles L. Spurr MD Professor of Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
Ramirez is the director of the Institute for Health Promotion Research and chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences at UT Health San Antonio. She is also associate director of cancer outreach and engagement at Mays Cancer Center.
Carvajal Carmona is associate vice chancellor and professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at University of California, Davis.
Other stories mentioned in this podcast include:
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20251015/Hispanic-Heritage-Month/