CAIN

Women & Infants Hospital and Brown University’s medical school have chosen Dr. Joanna M. Cain, an Oregon physician with expertise in women’s cancer and women’s health research, to serve as the top obstetrician-gynecologist for both institutions.

“Brown and Women & Infants have the opportunity to really lead women’s health care for the next generation. I really want to be part of it,” said Cain, 57, now a professor and the chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health and Sciences University. She will assume her new positions Oct. 1.

Cain said that Women & Infants can pursue and promulgate new research into how diseases affect women differently from men, educating women around the state in staying healthy. Her goal, she said, is “to have Rhode Island be the best place in the country or the world for women’s health, with the joint effort of the whole community and all the institutions in Rhode Island.”

“Dr. Cain is an internationally recognized leader in women’s health,” said Constance A. Howes, president and chief executive officer of Women & Infants. “She is passionate about providing the best health care for women and about caring for women with cancer. … We are thrilled she has accepted our offer to come here.”

Cain grew up on the land of the Yakima Nation in Washington state, where she was a minority amid a community of people — Native Americans — who would be considered a minority elsewhere in the country. In her town, she said, everyone went to the sukiyaki dinner at the Buddhist temple, and everyone went to the powwow. Family friends included farmers whose homes had outhouses and dirt floors, and people with big mansions in Seattle.

As a child she witnessed the disparities — how difficult it was for people in farming communities, particularly women, to get basic health care. “At an early age, seeing women dying from cancer stays with you,” she said.

From her earliest training in obstetrics and gynecology, Cain was interested in treating and preventing women’s cancers, an unusual choice in a field usually associated with delivering babies. She was the first female physician selected for subspecialty training in gynecologic oncology at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. She also has focused on medical ethics issues and curricular development in women’s health.

Cain said her background is well-suited for a hospital that Rhode Islanders know as the place where most babies are born — but that does much more, including treating women’s cancers. For example, Cain said, most Rhode Islanders probably don’t know that Women & Infants researchers are doing important work on identifying early signs of ovarian cancer, an illness that is often deadly because it can’t be detected until advanced stages. She hopes “to get more of that information out about how special [the hospital] already is.”

Cain will take over as chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Women & Infants, and chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, on Oct. 1. She replaces Dr. Donald R. Coustan, who is retiring. Cain will also serve as the new assistant dean for women’s health programs at Alpert Medical School.

ffreyer@projo.com