CancerWorld shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Global health is very good at diagnosing problems. But it is far less effective at making sure solutions actually reach patients.
That gap, between plans and reality, is where Isabel Mestres has chosen to work. As CEO of City Cancer Challenge, she is not focused on theory or high-level commitments alone, but on something much harder: making cancer care function in practice.
Her journey was not linear. From the private sector to global travel across Latin America, Asia, and Africa, to media and international development, she kept returning to one question: where does impact actually happen? That search eventually led her to cancer care – a field defined by both innovation and deep inequality. Where outcomes can still depend entirely on where you are born.
What stayed with her was simple, and unsettling:
Patients being told they may have cancer… and then left without a clear path to diagnosis or treatment.
That reality became her turning point. Instead of staying at the level of plans, she focused on systems where change can actually be built starting with cities. Not because they are simple, but because they make the full patient journey visible: where care breaks, where coordination fails, and where it can be fixed.
Her work is grounded in a simple belief: implementation is the real frontier of global health.
Not more strategies. Not more reports. But systems that deliver for patients. In a field full of thinkers, she represents something rarer. The one who builds. The doer.
Read the full CancerWorld interview by Gevorg Tamamyan.”
Other Articles Featuring CancerWord on OncoDaily.