The Research Road
100 days across Canada, Europe and Greece - following six questions through research, care and lived experinece.
The Route
Vancouver Island - British Columbia - Alberta - Saskatchewan - Manitoba - Ontario - Montréal, Québec - Paris, France - Leuven, Belgium - Amsterdam, Netherlands - Berlin, Germany - Vienna, Austria - Ljubljana, Slovenia - Zagreb, Croatia - Bologna + Ancona, Italy - Greece - Athens - Delphi - Piraeus - Crete
Each stop is chosen because it adds a different perspective. The goal is not to collect hospitals. It is to follow the questions wherever the strongest clinical, research, advocacy and lived experience voices lead.
British Columbia
Pain, biology and data. How can anatomical disease burden and lived suffering differ so dramatically - and what can long term patient data teach us about that gap?
Alberta
Distance, access, and chronic pelvic- pain care. What happens when specialized care exists, but patients may still travel long distances to reach it?
Saskatchewan
Specialist care, surgical quality, advocacy and the path from lived disease to institutional change.
Manitoba
Evidence, person dit and provincial specialist care. What can a dedicated pelvic-pain and endometriosis service solve - and what system pressures remain?
Ontario
National advocacy, diagnosis, technology and policy. How can research, clinical innovation and patient advocacy translate into earlier diagnosis and better care across Canada.
Québec
Language, culture, specialist care, imaging, rehabilitation and the transition from the Canadian story into the European research road.
Europe
The same six questions. A wider research landscape.
Paris, France
Specialist care, national strategy, diagnostic innovation and fertility. How can a health system shorten diagnostic delay while still making room for individualized treatment decision?
Leuven, Belgium
Multidisciplinary expertise, treatment trade-offs and experimental science. How do clinicians and researchers explore new possibilities without overstating what early evidence can prove?
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Patients inside research and multidisciplinary care. What changes when people living with endometriosis help shape the questions researchers ask and the outcomes they measure?
Berlin, Germany
Pain biology, neuroinflammation, fibrosis and persistent pain. Why can pain continue even when disease burden, treatment and imaging do not seem to explain the whole experience.
Vienna, Austria
Whole-person care, diagnosis, treatment pathways and system change. What does truly individualized endometriosis care look like when surgery is only one part of the picture?
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Biomarkers, molecular research and diagnostic delay. What would a reliable non-invasive test actually need to prove before it could change every day care?
Zagreb, Croatia
Patient - reported outcomes, advocacy, national reference care and research participation. How can lived experience be useful evidence without reducing patients to data points?
Bologna, Italy
Imaging, surgery, fertility, microbiome research and uncertainty. How should patients make decisions when several reasonable treatment paths exist and the evidence does not point to one universal answer?
Ancona, Italy
Transition. Ancona is the threshold between the European research road and Greece. No medical stop will be manufactured here unless a meaningful connection emerges.
Greece
The final questions are no longer only about what endometriosis is. They are about what we do with what we have learned.
Athens
Complex and deep disease, multidisciplinary treatment and careful biology. How do clinicians treat disease that can involve multiple organs while keeping the patient - not the procedure - at the centre of care?
Endometriosis is classified as non-cancerous, yet researchers increasingly study its striking similarities to cancer biology - including tissue invasion, angiogenesis, resistance to cell death, altered immune signalling, inflammation and abnormal cellular growth. Could understanding these shared behaviours change how endometriosis is understood and treated?
Delphi
Reflection. After crossing two continents, what changed? Which assumptions survived the road, which ones did not, and what questions are still unanswered?
Piraeus
Transition. The overnight ferry marks final movement from Research Road to the end of the 100-day journey.
Crete - Day 100
The road ends. The story doesn’t.
The journey ends in Crete, but the documentary, Global Endo-Research Atlas and the questions gathered along the road continue beyond Day 100.