Welcome!

My name is Joelle and I am writing this blog for myself, but anyone who wishes to read about my adventures this next year is welcome aboard. This will be my free-flowing forum to write about my work, my life, and my inner musings.

I chose the title “The FACES of A Young Woman in Kenya” for a few reasons.

1.     First - My Work: I am spending the next year as a Doris Duke Fellow, working at a UCSF-partnered health facility called FACES. FACES stands for “Family AIDS Care and Education Services” and is a program located in western Kenya. I will be working through FACES on a cervical cancer screening project. Cervical cancer is the second leading cause of female cancer-related morbidity and mortality in Eastern Africa. What is crazy is that this is a highly preventable cancer with a very inexpensive screening tool! This should not be happening! So we have a lot of work to do to get this epidemic under control and prevent young women from dying unnecessarily.

2.     Second - My Life: I originally became interested in cervical cancer screening while living and working in Tanzania before starting medical school. I learned that women were not being diagnosed with this disease until the only options were palliative care at an over-crowded hospital a full day’s bus ride away from home or stay at home in pain… and die.  The regional hospital performed a maximum of ten pap smears a day. Not a single woman I talked to in the village knew what cervical cancer was or what they could do to prevent it. And honestly, neither did I; there were no viable screening options for these women in when they did know that they should get screened. The faces of these young women that I met back in 2008 and the faces of the young women in Kenya whom I hope to help get screened are what my life is currently about.

3.     Third – My Inner Musings: I hope this year to explore and learn about myself. So get prepared for some mushy blog entries (and feel free to skip over my random ramblings and get to the good stuff). So this is a blog about exploring the various FACES of myself.