Novartis highlights the power of language in ‘My Cancer, My Words’ campaign

A new No­var­tis ini­tia­tive wants peo­ple to think about the words and phras­es that are used to talk about can­cer.

A ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple liv­ing or work­ing with can­cer — 67% of pa­tients and 88% of health­care pro­fes­sion­als — agreed that lan­guage mat­ters and cer­tain words can have both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive ef­fects, de­pend­ing on the pa­tient, ac­cord­ing to a No­var­tis sur­vey con­duct­ed in the US and UK.

Words or phras­es like “can­cer-strick­en,” “vic­tim” and “suf­fer­er” can have a neg­a­tive ef­fect on treat­ment de­ci­sions, ac­cord­ing to most re­spon­dents, while phras­es like “thriv­er” and “can­cer jour­ney” were viewed more pos­i­tive­ly.

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