Medical student creates project that has already provided contraceptive methods to more than 300 women

Summary
Medical student Naomi Ferreira created the Missão Mulher Saudável project, which has already benefited more than 300 women from the interior of Ceará with sex education, family planning and gynecological assistance, awarded with a university leadership award.

“One day I heard someone tell me that I wouldn’t make it far and that I might get pregnant as a teenager. That stuck with me and I promised that I would do it differently, that I wouldn’t conform. My dream is to give opportunities to more women like me.” With this in mind, 23-year-old medical student Naomi Nascimento Ferreira dos Santos created a family planning project that has already provided sex education and contraceptive methods to more than 300 women in the interior of Ceará in one year. The young woman studies at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC).

“I do work focused on sexual health, to encourage women to have their lives, to professionalize, to grow up and to decide the right time when they want to start their family. Today, I can see that I have used my story not only to change my reality, but to change the reality of other young women”, says Naomi, in an interview with Earth.

Born in Fortaleza, but raised by her mother until the age of 18 in the suburbs of the city of Caucaia (CE), Naomi says she had a humble childhood, in a place where it was difficult to imagine “winning in life through studies”. “I grew up in this environment where we see people lost in crime, we see death, it was something very common. Everything seemed very difficult,” recalls the young woman.

The turning point in Naomi’s life happened when she entered the Military College of Firefighters, a public school in Fortaleza, to attend high school and began to have more opportunities. “I managed to excel in my studies and I began to enjoy it. And I saw that it was the weapon I was going to use to change my reality and that of my family.”

After graduating and studying for a year on a scholarship, Naomi studied medicine at UFC in 2021. “It was a great feeling. I was really starting to reap the rewards of my studies,” she says. It was at university that she began to participate in various projects and, from the sixth semester, she became enchanted by the world of obstetrics and gynecology.

Birth of the project

The idea of ​​creating a family planning project arose during consultations at the university’s outpatient clinic, which are part of the medical course curriculum. Naomi, who graduates in January 2027, remembers a patient with endometriosis who was in a lot of pain. That’s when she realized she needed to reach more women.

“I wanted to be able to provide more care to these women. I saw how long it took them to get a diagnosis,” he comments. “I realized that just by listening to them, by welcoming them, by explaining to them, they felt much better, because they had never had access to this type of care in their lives. They had waited many, many years to be able to receive adequate care. Some came from far away, from the interior of Ceará,” adds the medical student.

With the support of the gynecology module coordinator, Naomi founded Missão Mulher Saudável last year, which has now become an official UFC extension project. “The objective is to provide quality gynecological care to women in the interior of Ceará,” he emphasizes.

How the program works

The initiative carries out sex education, family planning and intrauterine device (IUD) insertion actions in communities in the interior of Ceará. The project has already been implemented in the cities of Crateús, Quiterianópolis and Jaguaretama, in partnership with town halls. To date, in addition to benefiting more than 300 women, the project has trained 110 primary care professionals.

“We have created a model of care. We provide clinical care to patients and also place IUDs. In addition, we educate health professionals, nurses and doctors, so that they continue this care after we return to Fortaleza. And they stay in contact with us, and we also have a follow-up form for the appointments of these patients, to see if they are doing well, if they are responding well to the implanted IUDs, everything is documented”, details Naomi.

The project also reached a thousand high school students with educational activities on menstrual health, pelvic pain and contraception. “Education is the basis of everything, that’s why we have time to go to schools and use games to talk to students about sex education,” he says.

“We do this whole segment. Generally, on the first day, we raise awareness among professionals and go to schools. And on the second day, we make a joint effort for IUD insertion and gynecological care,” explains the student on how the project’s missions work.

In addition to this initiative, Naomi is the founder of the Minimally Invasive Gynecology Academic League (MIGS/UFC), through which she structured training in videolaparoscopy and minimally invasive surgery techniques for future physicians, and participated in the USP-UFC Surgical Expedition, which brings free gynecologic care and surgeries to areas with low access to healthcare. The young woman helped make the arrival of the project in the North-East possible.

An award-winning initiative

With the Missão Mulher Saudável project, the young woman won the In Practice Prize: University Protagonism 2025 in the Northeast category, awarded in November this year. The initiative rewards university students who stand out through projects with economic, social and scientific impact.

“This award means visibility for our action and more opportunities to expand it, not only for Ceará, but also for Brazil. Having won the award, having had the opportunity to participate with other young people, made me create new projects, think of new ideas,” he says.

As a winner, she will travel to China in January 2026 to participate in an international immersion in innovation and entrepreneurship, alongside five other winning students, representing the transformative potential of Brazilian social and humanized medicine.

“Medicine is welcoming, it is caring, it is listening, it is giving space for this human being to truly feel like a human being. Doing medicine is remembering every day that there, we are taking care of a life, of an individual who has a family, who has a past, who has a story and who has dreams, and to give during this short period that we have with this patient, hope, care and attention, because they are waiting very much this moment”, underlines Naomi.