Photo of Ronda Henry-Tillman from Susan Johnson's LinkedIn page
Sep 3, 2023, 17:33
Susan Johnson nominates Ronda Henry-Tillman for OncoDaily’s “100 Influential Women in Oncology”.
Susan Johnson, the Senior Program Manager of Friends of Africa, shared on LinkedIn.
“I would like to nominate Ronda Henry-Tillman, M.D. as an extraordinary woman leader for the “100 Influential Women in Oncology”: Key Opinion Leaders to Follow on Social Media in 2023
Dr. Henry-Tillman is a Professor and Executive Vice Chair of the Department of Surgery, Division Chief of the Breast Surgical Oncology Division, and a nationally and internationally renowned breast cancer surgeon at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, recognized for innovations and contributions in the field of breast cancer surgery. She holds the Muriel Balsam Kohn Chair in Breast Surgical Oncology.
I have known Dr. Henry-Tillman for several years through her partnership with the Friends of Africa, Inc. and the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation. Dr. Henry-Tillman has developed an early detection program for breast cancer and a breast surgery training program, she has also established lifesaving procedures at both the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia, and at the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital (BMMH) in Kinshasa, DR Congo. BMMH was opened by the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation in December 2007 and it has treated over 800,000 patients. It is a privately owned hospital located in central Kinshasa and its surgical staff was trained by the Friends of Africa oncology experts (gynecologic oncologists, breast surgical oncologists, and nurse oncologists from the U.S. and Zambia) to screen, detect, and surgically treat breast and cervical cancers using low-cost technology and modern surgical techniques. A clinical infrastructure was simultaneously developed at BMMH, permitting all oncology services to be housed in one center, a first for the DR Congo. Training and infrastructure development consisted of multiple training and mentoring visits to the DR Congo which has one of the highest female cancer death rates in the world. In 2020, right before the global pandemic was officially declared, the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation in collaboration with Bio-Ventures in Global Health (BVGH) purchased enough chemotherapy medications from Novartis to treat 650 breast cancer and 360 cervical cancer patients at the Biamba Marie Mutombo hospital.
Since 2017 more than 20,000 Congolese women have been screened for cervical cancer in the Congo and numerous breast cancer surgeries have been performed by surgeons at the Biamba Marie Mutombo hospital.
On September 12, 2022, Dr. Henry-Tillman was recognized as an honoree for the 2022 UAMS Dr. Edith Irby Jones Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Lifetime Achievement award.
In August 2023, Dr. Henry-Tillman joined her U.S. oncology team in Kigali, Rwanda where cervical cancer and breast cancer early detection camps are being conducted outside the capital city.”
