Isabel Mestres/LinkedIn
Jun 24, 2025, 06:52
Isabel Mestres Highlights City Cancer Challenge’s Focus on Local Research Capacity
Isabel Mestres, CEO of the City Cancer Challenge (C/Can), shared a post on LinkedIn:
“As I continue my learning journey in global health diplomacy, I spent the weekend completely absorbed in “The Foreign Gaze” by Seye Abimbola.
Seye, your essays sparked a running dialogue in my head. I found myself nodding, pausing, questioning, even debating with you. But one line wouldn’t leave me:
“To Connect a System to More of Itself.”
It hit me. That’s exactly what we’re aiming to do at City Cancer Challenge (C/Can). We work with cities to strengthen cancer care, not by importing high-income country solutions, but by helping them unlock their own, context-specific ones. That’s why we’ve made a bold move to invest in local research capacity: so cities can learn from their own realities, shape their own strategies, and chart their own path forward.
But reading your words also made me uncomfortable, in the best way! Are we really helping cities see themselves? Or are we still shaping knowledge for a foreign gaze? Are we generating insights for local action or writing for international recognition?
The push to publish globally can blur the purpose. But local voices don’t need to choose between being global or grounded. What if real credibility starts with being useful to your own community and letting that knowledge resonate outward?
Thank you, Seye, for the provocation, for holding up a mirror. We’ll keep working to connect systems to more of themselves and keep asking: who is this really for?
Thank you Hayley Jones for the recommendation. Miriam Mutebi and Julie S. Torode I stand by yourside.”
More posts featuring Isabel Mestres.
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Challenging the Status Quo in Colorectal Cancer 2024
December 6-8, 2024
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ESMO 2024 Congress
September 13-17, 2024
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ASCO Annual Meeting
May 30 - June 4, 2024
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Yvonne Award 2024
May 31, 2024
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OncoThon 2024, Online
Feb. 15, 2024
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Global Summit on War & Cancer 2023, Online
Dec. 14-16, 2023
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