At just 23, Erin Lombard is helping reshape women's healthcare long before qualifying as a doctor. While many medical students are still finding their footing, she is leading initiatives that bring life-saving preventive care to women who too often fall through the cracks of South Africa's healthcare system.

As head of Women's Health at Shawco Health, Lombard coordinates volunteer-led clinics serving communities in Hout Bay, Tambo and refugee women and children through a partnership with Scalabrini. She oversees cervical cancer screening programmes, ensures patients receive their results and follow-up care, coordinates health promotion initiatives and mentors volunteers committed to improving women's health. One of her proudest achievements has been expanding access to Pap smear screening while introducing more evidence-based approaches to cervical cancer prevention across Shawco's clinics.

Currently in her fifth year of the MBChB programme, Lombard believes healthcare is as much about advocacy as it is about medicine. She approaches leadership with the understanding that meaningful change is rarely completed by one person alone. Instead, her goal is to build systems and collaborations that will continue serving women long after she has handed over the baton.

She credits her passion for women's health to her gynaecology lecturer, Dr Chivaugn Gordon, whose clinical excellence and fierce advocacy showed her that compassionate doctors do more than treat illness—they challenge the barriers that prevent patients from receiving care in the first place.