People travel from within the United States and all over the world to seek care at National Cancer Institute–designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers like NYU Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center. Kevin Diasti, MD, a first-year fellow in the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, reflects on his experience as a physician and an immigrant from Egypt to address the need to improve access to care for people with cancer—regardless of their country of origin—during a presentation at the 2022 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

“I have memories of my mother and grandmother telling me stories of long trips that they had to take for even the most basic medical care and, more salient to my role today, stories of those in their community who were diagnosed with cancer and quickly passed away with very little done for them,” Dr. Diasti says. “So for me, inequities and disparities didn’t begin as academic concepts. They were simply what my family knew as life, reality, and a series of tangible obstacles they had to overcome. And that they did.”

Watch more from the American Society of Clinical Oncology.