Global Scholars: Dr. Mae Concepcion Dolendo

Dolendo: Oncology is Worth LIfe's Dedication

“Who is the cancer patient?”

It’s funny sometimes how one moment — or, in this case, one question — can help send a person down a new path in life.

For Dr. Mae Concepcion Dolendo, the moment and the question came during an observership at National University Hospital in Singapore. Dr. Dolendo was a pediatrician at the time and had moved with her family from the Philippines because of her husband’s work. She was beginning to explore becoming a pediatric gastroenterologist when a rotation in the pediatric oncology unit helped change everything.

“I was sitting next to my mentor, and there was this lady and two children,” she remembers. “And the mentor was asking me, ‘Who is the cancer patient?’ ”

Dr. Dolendo was trying to decide between the two children when her mentor told her that it was actually the mom.

“It really just blew me away,” she says. “When I did my pediatrics training in the Philippines … I rarely saw a child survive cancer. I thought it was not curable. And when I saw a mother have children, and survive cancer, that to me was like: Teach me how to do that.”

Dr. Dolendo was driven to learn all she could and then take that knowledge back to the Philippines with her.

“That was the major reason why I wanted to do oncology,” she says. “Because I thought … if you had just one life, right? It is something that’s worth dedicating your life to.”

The challenge, though, was just beginning. “When I went back to work in a public hospital in Davao City, Philippines, the patients can’t even, you know, pay for the most basic of medicines,” she says. “I would be able to diagnose them, and then they will drop out of treatment and die elsewhere. So I thought, ‘What am I doing?’”

She didn’t give up, though — buoyed in part by the experience of an observership training at St. Jude. “Heaven sent,” is how she describes it. “I said, if I can accomplish 20 to 30% of this, I would die happy.”

Dr. Dolendo would become one of the first pediatric oncologists on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. In the years that followed, she helped increase pediatric cancer survival rates in the public hospital on the island from less than 10% to nearly 50%. She now leads the Children’s Cancer Institute at Southern Philippines Medical Center in Davao City.

But while strides have been made, Dr. Dolendo is still bothered by another statistic — namely, the number of patients who aren’t reaching doctors in the first place.

She says that an estimated 1,500 children or adolescents will develop cancer each year in Mindanao. But her center and a network of four shared care facilities see just 400 new cases each year.

“So you can just imagine, there’s still more than a thousand kids out there who don’t even get the chance to be treated for cancer,” she says. “It breaks my heart to know that a child who has the potential for a cure doesn’t even get to see a doctor.”

Her Scholars Project seeks to support the estimated 1,100 children and adolescents with cancer who aren’t reaching health care professionals each year. Dr. Dolendo has named the project CarPaths, which stands for CARving PATHways for Better Pediatric Cancer Care and Cure.

Specifically, she plans to carve those pathways through experience-based co-design, which is informed by workshops with patients, families, health care workers, and other stakeholders. In the Philippines, she says, “We’ve found that talking to parents and families — particularly involving them in solutions — is actually very helpful.”

To better understand patient journeys and identify potential new pathways, Dr. Dolendo plans to review data and charts, hold focus groups, identify pain points, and review literature. She then plans to explore new ways and new partners to raise awareness of pediatric cancer and where to go for treatment. She hopes to help pediatric cancer patients reach hospitals much earlier and to create a model that can be replicated across the Philippines, and even beyond.

“And that’s not only for children,” she says. “Because children come with families and with adults. So when you carve a path, you don’t just carve a path for the child, you carve a path for the whole family. So it’s not only for cancer, but actually all diseases.”

Cancer has always been a personal issue for Dr. Dolendo. Her mother passed away from late-stage breast cancer when Dr. Dolendo was not yet 18. “During that time, I felt very powerless,” she says. “If I look at my life, that’s one thing that really made an impact to me. Because even if it was late-stage disease, we tried to save her, and we lost everything — including our home.”

In the wake of losing her mom, Dr. Dolendo wondered if she could still attend medical school. She eventually found a scholarship that supported her throughout her medical education.

Years later, it was a desire to keep pushing herself further that led her to apply for the Global Scholars Program. “I always believe in trying to be better,” she says. “Not in comparison with other people; just to be a better version of myself for patients.”

Through the program, she says, she found a community of colleagues who were all facing common challenges in different spots around the world.

This work can be lonely sometimes, she says. “You think you are the only person with those problems.” In that way, the program was a breath of fresh air — as were her visits to St. Jude, “… because I can park my problems at the gate of St. Jude and just focus and study, which I really love.”

“I had so many ‘aha’ moments when I was doing the program. … When I saw all those principles during the Scholars Program, it was really a joy to be able to validate the things that you are doing — and [know that] the path you’re taking is really the right path.”