As a fellowship trained Radiologist in Breast Imaging, I am delighted to be a part of the team of expert physicians and health care professionals at Associated Radiologists, LTD and St. Bernard’s Medical Center who are fighting to cure breast cancer in Jonesboro and Northeast Arkansas.

My journey to serve our community has been filled with unique and meaningful experiences. Following my graduation from Hendrix College, I participated in a year of missionary work at a rural hospital in Haiti. Later, I completed a Master’s in Public Health from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York. I then served as an Epidemiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center where I designed, implemented and analyzed multiple clinical studies before returning to Arkansas, my home state, to attend medical school. I graduated from UAMS where I also completed a 5-year residency in Diagnostic Radiology. Finally, I returned to New York to gain specialized fellowship training in Breast Imaging at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. During the subsequent 9 years at UAMS as an Associate Professor in the Departments of Radiology and Epidemiology, I was the recipient of over 4 million dollars in grant funding to support early detection and mobile mammography in Arkansas. I served as the 2018-19 President of the Arkansas Chapter of the American College of Radiology (ACR). I am also a member the National ACR Breast Imaging Commission, screening and new technologies committee as well as the Society of Breast Imaging Screening Leadership group.

I am so proud to be part of the first generation of physicians with the ability to significantly decrease a woman’s chance of dying from breast cancer by up to 50%. The question of whether or not early detection of breast cancer through screening mammography would reduce breast cancer mortality was answered decades ago through more than 9 million person-years of observation in randomized controlled trials conducted across the globe. Despite the scientific evidence that early detection saves lives, all Americans have not equally shared in the benefits of mortality reduction through screening and early detection. Certain minority groups and rural populations face educational, financial, and geographic barriers which prevent early detection and increase the chance that a woman will present at an advanced stage and die from breast cancer. With one-third of counties in Arkansas lacking a mammography facility, about 150,000 women are left living more than 30 minutes away from a screening facility. An estimated 275,000 women in Arkansas do not undergo annual screening with mammography as recommended which leads our state to have one of the worst mortality/incidence ratios in the US. St. Bernard’s “Ma’am Mobile” provides screening mammography to remove the aforementioned barriers to early detection by traveling to worksites and rural clinics, holding after-hours screening events, and engaging women at their place of worship. These activities save lives and are made possible by the support of the Arkansas affiliate of Susan G. Komen.