Making a Difference for Cancer Patients

“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” 

This quote by an unknown author has remained Diana Tamer’s guide throughout her journey from a biology and pre-med student in her home country of Lebanon to where she is today —  a clinical oncology pharmacist with the AdventHealth Cancer Institute and a clinical associate professor with the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Pharmacy in Kansas City, Missouri, United States. 

“Faith guides me in almost everything I do,” said Tamer, who first found her calling as an oncology pharmacist while volunteering in Beirut at the Children’s Cancer Center of Lebanon, an affiliate of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. “I love that AdventHealth Shawnee Mission is a faith-based organization where I am allowed to talk about faith with patients because I know the power that faith has in providing healing and comfort, especially when cancer is involved.”  

After joining AdventHealth Shawnee Mission in 2017, Tamer recalled one of her first patients who was undergoing treatments for cervical cancer. Tamer spent four years with this patient, providing treatment to her including trying non-traditional clinical treatments and pushing to get her into sought-after clinical trials, even during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the patient passed away from her illness.  

“Before she died, she told me, ‘Promise me you will never quit what you are doing, and you will continue to make a difference in people’s lives,’” Tamer said. “I did promise her that, and I told her that people like her make me want to continue doing what I’m doing despite all of the challenges.”

Beyond Hospital Walls

Tamer has kept her promise, broadening her work in the oncology space to go beyond the hospital walls. In July 2023, Tamer traveled to Ivory Coast, where she lent her oncology and pharmacy expertise and her native fluency in French to the BIO Ventures for Global Health’s African Access Initiative, which targets the cancer crisis in Africa.  

While there, she helped develop and present a multi-day, multidisciplinary curriculum to health-care workers based in the region on building the infrastructure necessary to sustain basic pharmacy services specific to cancer patients. 

“I am doing what I love as a pharmacist and professor because I feel that I can impact more cancer patients by passing on my knowledge to my patients and students,” Tamer said. “I’ve always dreamed of helping places that lack access to high-quality health care, so this was an opportunity of a lifetime. I was going to do everything to make it happen.” 

Back in Kansas City, Tamer is also actively involved in various community health initiatives, including providing cancer prevention education and screenings to underserved communities through UMKC’s Our Healthy Jackson County (OHJC) grant. Tamer is very excited for the OHJC collaboration to follow up on colorectal cancer screening patients screened in the community. She credits her colleagues at AdventHealth Cancer Center Shawnee Mission in Kansas for allowing her to keep her promise to her former patient to be able to make a difference in people’s lives.   

“I have people here at AdventHealth I can rely on who allow me to go down the street to provide accessible cancer screenings to the community or to travel abroad to educate health-care professionals to sustainably help their vulnerable populations for years to come,” Tamer said. “At AdventHealth Shawnee Mission, you never really have to ask anyone for help twice. That’s why at my heart I am AdventHealth.”

The original version of this story was posted on the Mid-America Union Conference news site.