11 May 2017
Ovarian cancer is the seventh most common cancer in women worldwide• and an earth-shattering piece of news to anyone who has just been diagnosed. HealthUnlocked are striving to make sure every one of those living with ovarian cancer has access to life changing personal online support, help and information whenever they need it.
Every month there are 25,000 visits to the three ovarian cancer communities in HealthUnlocked from people looking for support, help or information – that’s more than 6000 a week. Discussions range from diagnosis and prognosis, to how to communicate with friends and family, and everything in between. Chemotherapy and other treatments are particularly common topics of discussion, with 150,000 dedicated posts and comments, including discussions around avastin, hysterectomy, taxol, carboplatin, since the network begun.
By bringing millions of women together and supporting them through their journey, we are seeing shared experiences changing the day to day experiences of people at a very vulnerable moment in their lives. As people speak or see others going through a similar diagnosis, treatment or management of ovarian cancer, they get a better understanding and feel connected to others who have been living with similar challenges. With seven out of ten people never meeting a person with the same condition as them**, this is a particularly powerful type of support for many people.
Ovarian Cancer AMA
Next month one of our ovarian cancer communities, SHARE Cancer Support, will be hosting an Ask Me Anything (AMA) focused on the disease. This will be a live Q & A session for a whole hour, with a medical expert who will answer questions from the whole community. For most people this will be one of the first opportunities they have had outside of the traditional consulting room to ask a doctor some of their most burning questions about the disease. And, like everything in the community, the conversation transcript acts as a shared resource for women in the future facing the same questions.
AMA details:
Wednesday June 14, 12noon ET (5pm BST).
Dr. Don Dizon, expert in gynecologic oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center.
The AMA is open to anyone. You can join HealthUnlocked and follow the SHARE Ovarian Cancer support community in advance and ask your question as soon as the AMA goes live.
Join one (or all three) of our online ovarian cancer communities:
MyOvacome
OvaCare
SHARE Ovarian Cancer
Sources:
*The World Cancer Research Fund
** HealthUnlocked annual user survey 2016