Understanding and recognizing the inequities in cancer care around the globe underpins the 2022-24 World Cancer Day theme to Close the Care Gap. The needs are urgent, and the opportunity exists to make progress toward equitable cancer care for all. We must listen to the perspectives of people living with cancer and let those lived experiences guide our thoughts and actions. This is why for World Cancer Day 2022, our global team members and patients shared their ideas on how to #AmplifyOurVoice, using a megaphone to radiate their message to the world.
World Cancer Day, celebrated on February 4, is a global initiative that aims to raise awareness about cancer education, care, and prevention. The initiative is led by our friends at the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), a member-based organization whose mission is to reduce the global cancer burden and promote equity.
Our patient community provided inspiring responses to the question what do you want to say to the world about yourself?
How can we amplify the voices of our patients? Our team members have some amazing ideas:
Collective progress occurs when we start at the individual level – each of us can make a difference by amplifying our voice to bring visibility to the barriers that exist in accessing cancer care. There is always something new we can do to advocate for our patients and take action for increased access to cancer care globally:
Andrielle Yost is a Senior Program Manager at The Max Foundation. In addition to advancing global health equity, Andie is passionate about gardening, hiking, and her quest to watch all documentaries that exist.
This year, each of us had to learn how to support one another amid a global pandemic. In these difficult times, our mental and physical health have been tested and finding daily comforts is critical to our health. As each of us has taken steps to avoid infecting ourselves and reducing the risk of infecting….
In Latin America, the Maximize Life Campaign has become something like a tradition – a time when each patient organization creates an event or activity of their choice and powers it up for a campaign that takes on a life of its own!
13 patient groups from 11 Latin American countries joined this year’s movement, bringing together patients and caregivers with the purpose of telling the community that cancer is an issue, that ignoring it is not going to make it go away, and that the best approach is to learn about it in order to know what to do about it. From governments to the general public, everybody can get involved in figuring out how to treat cancer patients as members of society and not as a burden.
Nothing is more powerful than storytelling, especially when it’s told from a person’s first-hand experience.
In the Asia Pacific region, we are often known as “shy” community. We do not often share our stories publicly, especially a story about cancer diagnosis. We often have no one to turn to because we do not want our parents to worry; we do not want our children to feel the burden; we do not want to tell our neighbors who might be starting to avoid us because we are diagnosed with cancer.
