The Power of Communication and Collaboration

Janet Mosugu, recipient of the first Margaret Foti Scholarship, plans to use lessons learned during an AACR internship to improve public health messaging.

Janet Mosugu knows firsthand what can happen when public health communication fails to resonate with its audience. During field research in her native Nigeria, she saw families refuse to vaccinate their children and decline other medical interventions. Messages from health agencies were not enough to overcome residents’ cultural beliefs and mistrust of the government.

Seeing a need for more effective strategies, Mosugu has immersed herself in the study of health communication. She was the first recipient of the Margaret Foti Scholarship at Temple University in Philadelphia and is interning at the American Association for Cancer Research® (AACR), learning lessons she hopes will one day help increase public health awareness in her home country.

Growing up in Kaduna, Nigeria, Mosugu enjoyed caring for her pet chickens and dog, which inspired her to later study veterinary medicine at the University of Ibadan. After completing her degree, she became interested in the interconnected roles of animal, environmental, and human health. Following completion of an additional degree in public health, Mosugu conducted field work in northern Nigeria, which includes some of the country’s most rural and underserved communities. “I realized that even when you incentivized the community members, they would not accept any health interventions,” she said. She became curious about how better communication could help make people more willing to receive care.

Mosugu applied for the Communication for Development and Social Change (CDSC) graduate program at the Temple University Klein College of Media and Communication. The program director encouraged Mosugu to apply for a new scholarship named for Margaret Foti, PhD, MD (hc), a Temple alumna who is the CEO of the AACR. Established in 2023, the Margaret Foti Scholarship is awarded to Temple graduate students studying science communication with a specific focus on health and medicine. “I saw that [Dr. Foti] was really an advocate for strategic health communication, which is really what the CDSC course is all about,” Mosugu said. She applied for and received the first scholarship.

When you design health communication without the input of the community members, you might not really understand their beliefs or their perceptions, but when you collaborate with them, then you come up with better forms of communication.”
– Janet Mosugu

Mosugu earned her master’s degree in August 2024 and began a one-year internship with the AACR’s Communications and Public Relations Department that fall. She has worked on projects across the department, exposing her to different communication platforms. She has also helped the social media team monitor breaking health news, worked on website content management, and written a post on cancer stigma in African American communities for the AACR’s blog, Cancer Research Catalyst. In addition, she is working on a pilot project to increase cancer awareness in Nigeria.   

This April at the AACR Annual Meeting 2025 in Chicago, Mosugu assisted with the Global Scholar-in-Training Awards and the AACR Scientist↔Survivor Program^® (SSP) and attended the June L. Biedler Prize for Cancer Journalism reception. “I’ve really been impacted by all these programs,” she said.

The most important lesson she’s learned from her time with the AACR, Mosugu said, is the power of collaboration. Seeing the organization work with various constituent groups has reinforced the importance of community engagement when designing communication strategies, she noted. “When you design health communication without the input of the community members, you might not really understand their beliefs or their perceptions, but when you collaborate with them, then you come up with better forms of communication,” Mosugu said.

Mosugu added that she hopes to use her knowledge to improve health education in Nigeria and dreams of becoming a program director for a major health project. In the meantime, she’s focused on gaining as much experience as she can and enjoying the remainder of her internship. “I’ve been having the time of my life,” Mosugu said.