St. Jude People

Soad Linneth Fuentes-Alabí, MD, MPH

Senior Director - Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean Regional Program

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Affiliations

St. Jude Global

Short Biography

Dr. Soad Fuentes-Alabi is a pediatric oncologist and global health expert with over 15 years of experience in advancing childhood cancer care in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). She has played a pivotal role in strengthening health systems, implementing national childhood cancer control plans, and developing data-driven policies to improve pediatric cancer outcomes across Latin America.

She served as Scientific Director of the Pediatric Hematology-Oncology Day Clinic and the Population-Based Pediatric Cancer Registry (ROPESAL) at Fundación Ayúdame a Vivir (FAV) in Hospital Nacional de Niños Benjamin Bloom, El Salvador (2010-2025). During this time, she led critical initiatives in pediatric oncology, including the establishment of El Salvador’s first population-based pediatric cancer registry, contributing to regional cancer surveillance efforts and international research collaborations such as CONCORD-4.

Dr. Fuentes-Alabi earned her Doctor of Medicine (MD) from the Evangelical University of El Salvador, graduating as valedictorian, followed by a Pediatrics Residency at the National University of El Salvador and Hospital Nacional de Niños Benjamin Bloom. She completed her Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Fellowship at Universidad Autónoma de México and Instituto Nacional de Pediatría in 2006, where she was appointed Resident Coordinator for the Fellowship Program during her fifth year of training.

In 2016, she earned a Master of Public Health (MPH) in Clinical Effectiveness with a major in Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, supported by the St. Baldrick’s International Scholarship (2013-2018). Under the mentorship of Dr. Carlos Rodriguez-Galindo, Chair of the Department of Global Pediatric Medicine and Director of St. Jude Global, she developed a cancer epidemiology initiative in Central America aimed at establishing a population-based pediatric cancer registry in El Salvador, facilitating similar initiatives across Central America, and creating a childhood cancer epidemiology consortium to enhance data collection and research capacity in the region.

As a dedicated advocate for regional collaboration, Dr. Fuentes-Alabi has been an active member of the Asociación de Hemato-Oncología Pediátrica de Centroamérica (AHOPCA). She has spearheaded multi-country treatment protocols, including serving as Principal Investigator for the Neuroblastoma AHOPCA-2012 Protocol, and has been instrumental in promoting evidence-based pediatric cancer initiatives tailored to resource-limited settings.

Her expertise extends beyond clinical care, as she has led and advised multiple national pediatric cancer control strategies. In 2019, she was a Technical Committee Member for El Salvador’s National Plan for Pediatric Cancer Control, playing a key role in shaping national policies to ensure sustainable improvements in childhood cancer care.

From 2021 to 2024, she served as International Professional Consultant and Coordinator of the WHO Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). In this role, she collaborated with United Nations organizations, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) imPACT Review, and worked closely with Ministries of Health across Latin America to implement national cancer control plans, improve early diagnosis and treatment accessibility, and strengthen health system governance to ensure long-term sustainability.

Additionally, during her tenure at PAHO, she collaborated with multiple organizations to implement the WHO Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer (GICC) and its sponsor, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, through the St. Jude Global Pediatric Medicine Department and its multiple transversal programs.