Leslie C Amendola
Director of Marketing, Oncology
Janssen Oncology
Reinvigorating an Online Cancer Resource
While there are many online resources available to cancer patients and their caregivers, Janssen Oncology identified an important gap: An online destination where patients and caregivers could get information that can be customized to their specific needs. Leslie Amendola and her team led the re-launch of Cancer.com, a site for people impacted by cancer that is tailored to each visitor based on cancer type (including breast, lung, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, prostate, and more) and where they are in their journey.
In partnership with leading advocacy organizations such as American Cancer Society, Cancer Support Community, and CancerCare, the site offers content and resources from reliable sources that include those patient advocacy organizations as well as government agencies (NCI), medical centers (Mayo, Cleveland Clinic), and various news and academic media (Healthline, HealthDay, New York Times, Reuters, AP).
Furthermore, visitors can create profiles that allow them to personalize the content offered to fit their specific needs. And by creating a profile, visitors also unlock access to My Care Activator, an exclusive coaching tool developed by Johnson & Johnson behavior scientists that helps people build or strengthen important skills, such as coping with symptoms, working with a care team, asking for support, and getting appropriate exercise and better sleep. Another tool, Advocacy Connector, lets visitors search a comprehensive listing of resources in order to find emotional and community-based support for things such as clinical trial information, travel services, and wellness activities.
Traffic to the site has doubled since this time last year driven by growing organic and referral traffic with equal reach between patients and caretakers. But perhaps the greatest success metric is the feedback from the patients themselves. A patient ad board of leading patient advocates conducted in 2018 praised Cancer.com for offering a trusted place of credible curated resources, and offering unique tools to help manage and cope with diagnosis.
“While I always embrace new work experiences and opportunities at my job,” Leslie explains, “the one constant is that I am eager to continue working toward ushering life-saving products and life-changing solutions like Cancer.com to patients who need them most.”
