Harvard creates Cancer FactFinder website, available in nine languages

CAMBRIDGE - The realities of cancer can be scary and confusing, but for those who speak limited or no English they may feel especially so.

Hoping to help lessen that feeling, a group of scientific experts and community members have joined forces with the aim of providing accurate and reliable information about cancer, dispelling common misconceptions about the disease, and reducing language barriers.

A team from the Zhu Family Center for Global Cancer Prevention at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Center for Cancer Equity and Engagement at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center recently created The Cancer FactFinder, a free online resource examining myths and misinformation about cancer in multiple languages.

“Cancer misinformation can negatively impact anyone, no matter what language they speak,” said Dr. Timothy Rebbeck, who serves as director of the Zhu Family Center for Global Cancer Prevention and the website’s editor in chief. “It’s important to ensure that everyone can access accurate cancer facts - that’s why we have launched the Cancer FactFinder in many commonly spoken languages.”

What languages is The Cancer FactFinder available in?

In addition to English, the site offers information in Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Creole, French, Tagalog and Vietnamese.

“The overarching goal of this initiative is to ensure that people have accurate information about what causes cancer and then to be able to use that information to make decision choices about their lifestyle and exposure so that they can minimize their cancer risk,” said Dr. Rebbeck, a professor of medical oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

He said the team’s mission is to provide a one go-to source where simple, clear, and definite answers can be easily found. They are constantly reviewing scientific evidence from human studies and adding new information or updating existing topics about what has been shown to be linked to cancer.

“Misinformation is very common in cancer; there’s a lot of fear out there,” said Dr. Rebbeck. “It’s often difficult to know which information is reliable. We created this site to give people ready access to accurate information so they can make informed choices to avoid certain exposures or take positive steps to maximize their health.”

The Cancer FactFinder is available at https://cancerfactfinder.org. Visitors can pick the language of their choice by placing the cursor on the word ENGLISH on the top right side, which then opens a menu with all the languages offered.

The Cancer FactFinder covers a wide range of topics

Dr. Rebbeck said the team seeks to highlight topics which are of interest to the community.

“We try to identify topics that an advocate, a survivor or a community member might care about,” he said. “These topics come from all sorts of different sources, but I would say most of them come from what we see being posted in social media or elsewhere and we recognize it as not being correct.”

The Cancer Factfinder users can find various tools to help them decide what is factual and what is not.

“We’ve tried to distill it [information] down, balance it and make it understandable,” he said, adding that a lot of the information being presented comes from scientific literature and people could otherwise get lost on the scientific lingo.

Website users can not only see a wide variety of claims, which come each with an interpretation of the team’s findings about their veracity, but also filter their inquiries by using different search terms.

“It’s both a way of confirming what you may have heard from social media, family, from whatever… to see whether it’s accurate or just to learn about things that might cause cancer,” Dr. Rebbeck said.

Users also have the choice to choose from a list of categories, including diet and nutrition, lifestyle, medical exposures and procedure, consumer products, and occupational and environmental exposure.

Currently, there are more than 60 topics on the website. For each one, The Cancer Factfinder team provides information about what you may have heard; what science tells us; how to reduce your risk; and what this means to you.

The site also includes dozens of links to reliable sources of online cancer information.

Website continually updated

Dr. Rebbeck said the translation component reflects the team’s desire to expand use of the site in the state and beyond.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than eight percent of the U.S. population does not speak English “very well.”

Dr. Rebbeck, who speaks a little bit of Portuguese as he lived in Brazil for a while, said that all information is translated by professional translators.

He said the next step would be to provide content that would take into consideration the cultural differences of the different ethnic groups and make it more sensitive and responsive to their needs. For example, their dietary or lifestyle practices could be considered when addressing different topics.

“Social context is really incredibly important, and we’ve been much more limited in our ability to address that,” he said. “One way we’ve thought about doing this is to have an advisory board of people who are native speakers of these languages, and they can comment on the content and maybe the way it’s presented. I think it’s worth us exploring it. We’re trying to partner with a couple of different organizations to build out that community centeredness.”

He said the team will continuously tweak the site to improve it.

“We need to tailor the site to make it more user friendly to a broad population in terms of varying literacy and computer literacy to make it essentially more accessible,” he said.

He said the feedback has been great thus far.

“We have a lot of hits,” he said. “So, it's been very well received. We’ve gotten very positive feedback.”

So far, The Cancer Factfinder has been made possible with funds provided by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “We’re doing this on a shoestring,” said Dr. Rebbeck. “What we’re trying to do right now is partner with a few other large and advocacy organizations, not only to help support things, but also better communicate the information that we have to different groups.”

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Harvard creates Cancer FactFinder website in nine languages