Cancer Survivorship 101: From Sexual Health to Side Effects Management

"From Sexual Health to Side Effects Management", with Narjust Florez (Duma), MD

Due to the quarantine, we had to cancel our annual in-person Cancer Survivorship 101 event that was planned for June, 2020. Instead, we created a series of video lectures presented here on our website and our YouTube page featuring the speakers that were to be highlighted at the event.

From Sexual Health to Side Effects Management
Narjust Florez (Duma), MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School
Thoracic Medical Oncologist
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
450 Brookline Avenue, Dana 09
Boston, MA 02215

Dr. Narjust Florez is originally from Venezuela. She completed her internal medicine residency at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where she was the chief fellow from 2018 -2019.

She is the Associate Director of the Cancer Care Equity Program, a thoracic medical oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Cancer Center and a Member of the Faculty at Harvard Medical School. In 2022, Dr. Florez also became the first Latina to hold an Associate Editor position in oncology as the new Associate Editor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the JAMA Oncology Journal.

Dr. Florez’s clinical interests include targeted therapy for lung cancer and the care of women with lung cancer, including their unique aspects of cancer survivorship. She is the principal investigator of the Sexual Health Assessment in Women with Lung Cancer (SHAWL) Study, the largest study to date evaluating sexual dysfunction in women with lung cancer.

Apart from her clinical interests in lung cancer, she is also a leading and productive researcher in cancer health disparities, gender and racial discrimination in medical education and medicine. Dr. Florez is one of the co-founders of the Twitter community #LatinasInMedicine, now composed of over 8,500 members globally. She received many awards, including the 2018 Resident of the Year Award by the National Hispanic Medical Association, 2019 the Mayo Brothers Distinguished Fellowship award, the 2020 Rising Star award by the LEAD national conference for women in hematology and oncology, and the 2021 International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) North America Cancer Care Team Award for outstanding clinical care.

In addition, Dr. Florez founded the Florez (formerly Duma) Lab in 2019. The laboratory focuses on lung cancer, social justice issues in medicine and medical education. The laboratory long-term goals are to create a welcoming environment for medical trainees from historically underrepresented groups in medicine while improving the care of vulnerable populations.

Members of the Florez Lab are agents of change. Since its foundation, the Duma laboratory has received research funding from several national agencies, published over 30 studies and editorials.
Her work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Nature, Cancer Cell, JAMA Oncology, Lancet Oncology, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, (amongst many others), and featured in various media outlets including The New York Times, STAT News, Healio, Onclive, Vox News, Business Insider, ASCO Post, and Doximity.

Twitter: @NarjustFlorezMD

Survivor Journeys has been a non-profit organization since March, 2015. Its origins, began during the year-long medical quarantine Dr Jay Burton lived through after his stem cell transplant for Acute Myeloid Leukemia which ended in late October 2011. Dr Burton’s emotional and social support experiences prompted speaking engagements about cancer survivorship. The community interest generated from these talks, as well as the lack of emotional and support services for cancer survivors in our region, led to the creation of Survivor Journeys.