How We’re Working to Help People With Cancer Across the World

Lidia Schapira, MD, FASCO; 2015-2021 Cancer.Net Editor in Chief
April 7, 2021
Lidia Schapira, MD, FASCO

Cancer is a global issue, and in order to improve care for all people living with cancer, the world community needs to collaborate. That’s why every year on April 7, we as a global cancer community come together to celebrate World Health Day. This year, we’ll be celebrating the 2021 theme of “building a fairer, healthier world,” which is perfectly aligned with the focus of 2020–2021 ASCO President Lori J. Pierce, MD, FASTRO, FASCO, to promote health equity for “every patient, every day, everywhere.” 2020 was an especially difficult year, and it highlighted local and global inequities in access to care as well as the need for urgent responses.

Cancer.Net helps reduce these inequities by providing easy access to high-quality information for people with cancer, caregivers, and health care professionals all over the world. In recent years, the global reach of Cancer.Net has expanded dramatically. In fact, the 6 countries we reach the most outside of the United States—Spain, Mexico, the United Kingdom, India, Argentina, and Canada—account for well over a third of our readers. This demonstrates that people across the world appreciate having easy access to trusted information when they are personally touched by cancer. I am especially happy that we have a strong connection to so many Spanish speakers in the United States and abroad, given my own Latin American roots.

Encouraged by the growth of our global readership, Cancer.Net is constantly working to improve our accessibility to international readers and provide the important information people affected by cancer need, regardless of their location. Let me share a few examples of our work in making our information more accessible to a global audience: 

  • Cancer.Net provides translated content in several languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian, Romanian, Arabic, Greek, and Armenian. You can find this translated content through Cancer.Net’s ASCO Answers Fact Sheets and on the Cancer.Net Blog. You can also view Cancer.Net in Spanish.

  • We have created the Cancer in My Community blog series, which describes what the cancer experience is like in other countries and points to where people with cancer and their loved ones within these countries can find important local resources.

  • Since much of the world accesses information through their smartphones, we have made our website responsive on mobile devices so Cancer.Net is accessible to anyone, anywhere via the device they have. Learn more about Cancer.Net Mobile.

  • We regularly incorporate professional ASCO guidelines into our content to make it easier to share expert-vetted recommendations for treatment and care as a way of bringing high-quality cancer care across the world.

As we continue to expand our reach and adapt our content for the international cancer community, we remain focused on meeting the needs of all people with cancer, their caregivers, and their loved ones. This means recognizing the differences in resources that are locally available and the importance of local cultures in shaping individual beliefs and experiences around cancer. On this World Health Day, we add our voices to those committed to sharing resources and accelerating discovery that will lead to better cancer care for every patient, every day, everywhere.

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