In the Spotlight with Steven

To mark the final day of Sickle Cell awareness month, our last ‘In the Spotlight’ interview features Dr. Steven Okoli.

Steven is a Hematologist based at Imperial College NHS Trust, as well as a Clinical Senior Lecturer in Imperial College London’s Department of Immunology and Inflammation.

How did you get involved with the Invisible Warrior project?

Louisa is one of our patients, so I had met Louisa a few times and she informed me about the project. And because of my ties with Imperial College London, I met up with Linda on a couple of occasions, and from then on my involvement with the Invisible Warrior project has been fairly organic.

I have delivered a few talks for the project and then over the last few years, I've started to get more heavily involved. The Invisible Warrior team have attended some of the events that we do within NHS Trust and I’ve supported the project at events like the Great Exhibition Road Festival.

One element of the Invisible Warrior project is delivering workshops as part of the STEM Futures programme at Imperial College London, which you are involved in. Can you tell us a bit about that?

STEM futures is a fantastic project that encourages students of Black heritage to pursue a career in science and medicine. I think it is critically important that we try and encourage those, particularly those from ethnic minority backgrounds, to take on these careers. To try and drive interest from within those particular ethnic groups.

I think it's always really important that people see individuals that have been able to achieve the goals they're trying to attain.

STEM Futures marriage very well with Invisible Warrior [as Sickle Cell is a disorder that predominantly affects those from an African or Caribbean family background] and for the last two or three years, I’ve been doing sessions with Invisible Warrior to explain my life journey.

I think it's always really important that people see individuals that have been able to achieve the goals they're trying to attain.

And it has been extremely rewarding as someone who has lived that journey to be able to talk about my successes, my challenges, my failures, and to encourage and hopefully inspire those young adults to try and pursue a career in science and medicine.

How has it felt delivering workshops for these students?

I've been taken by the feedback, by the enthusiasm of these young people and their willingness to listen, to engage, to ask questions, and actually, I feel like our future is really quite bright.

These young people will be the leaders of the future, the leaders in science and in medicine. And I think that's what drives communities, that's what drives economies, that's what drives the world. So, if we can inspire these young people to engage in these sort of activities, these careers, these subjects, then I think that we've got a really bright future ahead.

Why do you think the Invisible Warrior project, Sickle Cell and Louisa’s story is so important to share with these young people?

When you tell the story of Sickle Cell, you are telling a story of not just of a scientifically and medically inspiring disorder, but you're also telling a story of the challenges of, particularly, those of black ethnic origin.

It tells you the story of how engaging and trying to overcome some of those challenges helps you, helps your family. Sickle Cell is a disorder that affects predominantly black people and it doesn't just affect the individual, it affects communities.

If you can tell the story of Sickle Cell in a way that leads people to start to think about how they can help people overcome those challenges, then you’ve told a story of why science and and medicine is so important.

Can you recall the first STEM Futures session that you did with Invisible Warrior?

Working in Sickle Cell is difficult [it can be] quite demoralizing ... [but] seeing such positive feedback from those young people really did inspire me to keep going.

I remember it quite vividly because it was a really, really busy day and I was pretty exhausted by the time I got to the session. But the enthusiasm of those young people really inspired me.

Working in Sickle Cell is difficult. There are very few treatments. Our patients are often in pain and it can sometimes be quite demoralizing. Trying to increase scientific developments in Sickle Cell is even more demoralizing, because there's so little there.

So going to that event and talking on the challenge and seeing such positive feedback from those young people really did inspire me to keep going, inspired me to want to do more.

Not only were the young people inspired by the session, but I was also inspired. And after that, it was a no-brainer, I was always going to want to do more sessions. I got so much from it, and I just loved doing it.

Invisible Warrior has achieved a lot in its first five years. Looking to the future, what is something you hope the project will achieve in the next five years?

My hope is that the Invisible Warrior programme will help Sickle Cell to attain the profile it deserves. Help educate individuals and communities to better understand the disorder, so through education people show greater empathy, improving the lives of those living with the disorder.