Some leaders come to health equity through data. I came to it through lived experience.
In this article, I talk about growing up in Detroit, serving as a caregiver at a young age, navigating engineering and molecular biology as a first-generation student, and then confronting medical racism firsthand during my own reconstructive foot surgery. Those experiences didn’t just frustrate me—they pushed me to ask harder questions about who gets heard, who gets access, and who gets left to figure things out alone.
That line of questioning is what led me to create the STEMM & Cancer Health Equity (SCHEQ) Foundation. In the piece, I walk through why SCHEQ exists, how we use plain-language infographics, lung cancer summits, and community partnerships, and why STEMM workforce diversity is not separate from cancer equity—it’s part of the same problem and the same solution.
If you want to understand why I speak the way I do about health equity, trust, and system design, this is the story behind it.
https://www.scheq.org/turning-lived-experience-into-impact-dr-eugene-manleys-story-as-a-leader-in-health-equity-and-stemm-access
