Many know Cheri Canon, M.D., Professor and Witten-Stanley Endowed Chair of Radiology at UAB, not only as an exceptional leader and clinician, but as tireless advocate for the advancement of women and minorities who are under-represented in medicine. But her advocacy wasn’t always part of her career vision.
“For the first half of my career, I didn’t think about gender at all,” Canon said. “I actually thought we should be agnostic to gender. But then I came to realize that we can’t do that. If we’re going to get the equity and diversity that we all know we need, we’re going to have to be a lot more intentional.”
Born and raised in Texas, the younger of two children, Canon described herself as a “tomboy” who “didn’t even think of myself as a girl.” Her parents were always supportive of her ambitions, which settled on medicine as a teenager. As a child, she had other helping professions in mind. She recalled an art project in second grade in which she proclaimed she wanted to be a veterinarian, make $3 an hour, “cook and clean,” and live in “Floradu.”
As an adolescent with a strong aptitude for science, she was taken under the wing of the local family practitioner, who went out of his way to mentor promising young people. Canon started working in his office in a clerical role, filing and answering phones. After a while, the doctor started pulling her into patient visits, and then brought her along when he made rounds at the hospital. It was during her time shadowing that she began to cultivate her lifelong love of medicine.
After completing undergraduate work at the University of Texas at Austin, Canon began medical school at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. She enjoyed parts of the potential career path in medicine, and felt a particular affinity for surgery. When she decided on orthopedic surgery as a specialty, she took a radiology elective to further this goal.
It was in that radiology elective that she experienced an epiphany: radiology was, in her words, a “perfect fit.” She characterized her determination to pivot toward this specialty as an easy decision.
This decision, however, rested less easily with her extended family, who questioned the suitability of radiology. They felt it would not be sufficiently patient-facing for their people-loving relative; faulty perceptions of the specialty played an important role. Canon’s career direction caused family rifts that were long in healing.
Her choice in where to complete her residency was also a factor in these family divisions. As she neared the end of medical school, Canon began looking into residency programs throughout the Southeast. There were many elements to consider: the institutional culture, the quality of the program, the city, and its proximity to where Malcolm Nelson, the man who would become her husband, was training in emergency medicine in Baton Rouge.