From diagnosis, through treatment, and into recovery, people living with head and neck cancer (HNC) encounter a variety of health care providers (HCPs) who make up the HNC multidisciplinary team (MDT). People who are newly diagnosed with HNC may be referred to HCPs in specialties they have never heard of before, adding another layer of challenges to what already may be a difficult diagnosis to comprehend. Through our close experiences working with people affected by HNC, we learned that many yearned to hear directly from these providers about their roles, how they work together, what to expect, and, most of all, that these specialists see them as people first. It was important to help demystify these providers to help people living with HNC and their loved ones feel more comfortable and confident about the health care system.
The overarching Made of More initiative is designed to help people affected by HNC feel heard, supported, and connected as a broader community. The MDT video series is an extension of this initiative, created with the hope that it can further convey this mission.
We first connected with patient-advocacy groups that focus on head and neck cancers to identify a list of the various specialists that someone might encounter throughout their HNC journey. With the partnership of these patient-advocacy groups, we reached out to HCPs who have direct experience working with individuals living with HNC. These providers were asked to speak about what their role is and the part they play in the HNC journey.
We traveled across the country to meet with seven HCPs who described their specialty, what their role is on the multidisciplinary team, and how the team works together to provide the best care possible for each person living with HNC. We filmed each HCP and used the footage to build out an episodic miniseries. The series opened with an introduction to the MDT and dove deeper into each specialty with each subsequent episode.
Episodes of the video series were published on a rolling basis on the Made of More YouTube channel. To draw viewers to the series on YouTube, short teaser videos and social posts were published across social platforms by each partner: Head and Neck Cancer Alliance (HNCA); Support for People with Oral and Head and Neck Cancer (SPOHNC); Thyroid, Head and Neck Cancer (THANC) Foundation; CancerCare; and Eisai Inc. Promoting new episodes on these social channels was critical to ensure we were reaching the right audiences: people living with HNC and their loved ones. Social posts included the #MoreThanHNC hashtag to help grow the initiative while driving viewers to the full-length episodes on YouTube.
The final videos produced in this unique series serve as an inspirational and helpful resource for people affected by HNC—they can hear from providers themselves about what to expect and how important it is to them to provide the best care possible to each individual. The series offers thorough explanations and aims to provide a level of comfort for people affected by HNC.
Once the video series launched on YouTube and began being promoted across partners’ social channels, it was clear that this creative approach was highly valued among the HNC community, resulting in:
It has been incredible to see how this creatively distinguished campaign has made such a positive impact on driving support and awareness within the HNC community and beyond.
