Dreams without borders: One doctor’s mission of courage and impact

While in her third year of medical school in Sierra Leone, Fiona Strasserking, MD ’15, was forced to flee a civil war. Eventually settling in the United States, she supported herself and her family in Africa by working three jobs, including one at Blockbuster Video. Despite the hardships, she held fast to her dream of helping others as a doctor.

“We had one nurse in our close-knit area in Sierra Leone, and everyone went to her for everything. I wanted to be just like her,” Fiona says. “I always knew I would find a way to help people in that region. I just never imagined how I would get there.”

After initial rejections from United States medical schools, a Navy recruiter she met while working at Blockbuster suggested she enlist. In the military, she was able to further her medical education—she trained as a cardiovascular technician—and pay back the country that had given her refuge. After her service, she worked as a cardiac sonographer at UT Physicians in Houston while taking night classes. She was eventually accepted into McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston.

“I cherish the time I spent at the school,” Fiona says. “I am grateful to Dr. David McPherson and other cardiology faculty for their unwavering support and mentorship along this journey.”

As part of the school’s global health concentration, Fiona returned to Sierra Leone for a two-month study to help address the region’s lack of medical data. Her published findings documented the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors and influenced the country’s health policy. Her work expanded to Peru during an internal medicine residency at Washington University in St. Louis and then to Zambia during a cardiology fellowship at Vanderbilt University. As a National Institutes of Health Fogarty Fellow, she worked with the local Zambian medical community to establish a heart failure clinic for underserved communities.

Today, Fiona serves as an assistant professor at UT Southwestern Medical Center and coordinator of the UT Southwestern Medical Center/University of Zambia International Heart Education Consortium. By bringing together doctors in these two distant places, she is helping combat cardiovascular disease in Zambia—a country where fewer than 10 cardiologists serve a population of 20 million. Through this collaboration, Fiona and her colleagues support education and training initiatives to improve cardiovascular care in the region.

Reflecting on her journey, Fiona says, “When we work together, we can do so much more and help so many people who need us.”