I'm Dr. Calbeth C. Alaribe, DMSc, MPH, PA-C — an OBGYN Physician Associate (PA), researcher, and health equity strategist. But before any of those titles, I was simply a little girl from a Nigerian immigrant family who knew she wanted to serve. I grew up in the United States moving between worlds, and I understood early that where you were born, what you looked like, and who your parents were determined what kind of care you received, what kind of future people imagined for you, and how much space you were allowed to take up.

I became tired of hearing the same story, told by different women, about different conditions, with the same ending: dismissed. I was diagnosed with endometriosis at an early age. What should have been a turning point in my care became a masterclass in what this system does to women who look like me: it dismisses. It delays. It doubts. I lived that reality, and then I watched it happen again and again to women in my community, to my patients at the hospital, and in research that told me no one had even bothered to study this properly.