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Why We're MADE FOR THIS

Learn what we're doing to transform health care, prepare the next generation of leaders, and solve the world's greatest medical challenges.

Stories

A Passion for Preventing Cancer
Did you know that one in five new cancers is caused by infection? Meira Epplein, PhD, a co-leader for Duke Cancer Institute’s Cancer Control and Population Sciences Research Program, is working to get the word out about testing and treatment for a common stomach bacterium called h pylori.
Riding for Research
Learn why Paul Rudershausen is cycling across North America to raise funds for the research of Jason Somarelli, PhD, at Duke Cancer Institute. Somarelli studies the genes that promote cancer spread in both humans and dogs.
Two-time Olympic Diver to Pursue Emergency Medicine Career
The 2012 London Olympic Games played out like a fairy tale for Abby Johnston McGrath, MD’18. She stood on the podium, watching her country's flag rise up as they put a silver medal for synchronized diving around her neck, and she was inspired to continue diving at the 2016 Olympics.
The Key to Success
Two weeks before her 19th birthday, Samantha Casper, MSN’18, had a car accident. She was headed out for a night of fun with a friend, but ended up at the hospital. The doctors told her mother that Casper had suffered a traumatic brain injury and that she might not survive. Casper has survived, but she was told that due to short term memory loss, she could never go back to college. But she had other plans. “My mother instilled in me ‘Do more, be more, don't give up,’” says Casper.
Alumni Spotlight - Fixing the Unimaginable

Tucker Roussin is a four-year-old healthy boy. When his mother, Katie, was 20 weeks pregnant, he was diagnosed with a pericardial teratoma, an extremely rare tumor that grows on the lining surrounding the heart. The tumor was almost as large as his tiny heart, and it was growing quickly. Clinicians at the Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) recommended an open fetal surgery to remove the tumor.

Former All-American Georgia Beasley to Join Faculty
Georgia Beasley was a student-athlete at Duke when she met Sara, an 11-year-old girl, who was sitting on the bleachers at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The young girl was waiting for her father, who was late to pick her up from a Duke basketball summer camp. Beasley asked her to catch rebounds for her, and Sara happily agreed. Later, her father introduced himself as none other than Henry Friedman, MD, deputy director of the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke.
For One Alumna, Financial Toxicity Is More Than Just Academic
In 2005, Fumiko Chino, MD’14, thought she had her future planned out. She was engaged to be married and was working in her dream job as an art director for a video animation company in Houston, Texas. “I got paid to watch cartoons for a living,” she says. “It was fun.”
Come One, Call All: The Joys of the Osler Literary Roundtable
Outside, it is a Friday afternoon in early March: cold, bright, windy. Inside- in a small room on the first floor of the Duke Clinic – it is after dinner and Count Ilyick Rostov has downed another ryumka of vodka in the bar of Moscow’s Hotel Metropol.
Shania's Story of Success
Eight-year-old Shania Robinson's life was saved at Duke with a double transplant of a heart and kidney.