Meeting the Needs of Latin Communities through Digital Tools and Strategies

Background:  The National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institutes of Health leads the cancer research community toward accelerating the rate of scientific discovery and reducing the burden of cancer. NCI maintains one of the largest repositories of evidence-based cancer information in the world and although there has been substantial progress in cancer treatment, screening, diagnosis, and prevention, addressing cancer health disparities is an area in which progress has not kept pace. Education and awareness is an important component in addressing health disparities so that patients can make better decisions about care. 

Program background:  In collaboration, NCI and Sapient Government Services (SGS) addressed the issues. Historically, NCI has provided information and resources for a variety of audiences in both English and Spanish. However, the enterprise website, Cancer.gov, recently underwent a massive redesign to make content not only mobile-ready but easier to understand and navigate. Understanding the need to communicate with audiences of various languages, a heightened focus was placed on creating a Spanish version of the site that was culturally relevant to Spanish-speaking populations. 

Evaluation Methods and Results:  To ensure an integrated communication approach, special considerations were made for written text length, imagery, prioritization of translated content, and social media outreach. Examples of these elements include specific cancer type content, social campaigns, translated infographics, etc. As a part of the content strategy, around 40% of English content was translated to Spanish (with a heavier emphasis on patient education materials). Utilizing analytics to better understand engagement levels after the implementation of these strategies, NCI and Sapient have seen substantial progress.

Conclusions:  Since the redesign, Spanish site traffic has increased from 19% to almost 29% of total visits with users from countries worldwide. Site satisfaction scores are around 82%, which is higher than the industry standard. Visitors have increased their time on the site, spending an average of 8.2 minutes per page. Social media channels also show high engagement scores as more and more followers are seeking out our channels to access information. In increasing the quantity and quality of the information provided, we have increased our reach on both the web and through social media channels.

Implications for research and/or practice:  The decision to upgrade Cancer.gov to be responsive across all digital platforms strengthened the bridge between the agency and Spanish-speaking citizens. As some populations with multiple languages frequently have greater access to mobile devices versus desktop, these methodologies can be implemented to meet that greater need for the same information and communication to flow beyond desktop to mobile.