Innovative Approaches to Reaching Hispanic/Latino Cancer Survivors and their Families

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Hispanic/Latino population is the largest and fastest growing minority population. As this population increases, cancer incidence and mortality rates will steadily increase. It is important for cancer-serving organizations to position themselves as a resource among the Spanish-speaking community. The Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) developed a Hispanic/Latino Outreach Program to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate resources for Hispanic/Latino cancer survivors. The Program provides online, print and direct support to Spanish-speaking cancer survivors. The LAF developed a social media campaign that would target bilingual cancer survivors and their families. The LAF created both English and Spanish widgets that are available for download at LIVESTRONG.org/Espanol. The widgets include cancer support messages, inspirational quotes for cancer survivors and are updated biweekly. The LAF created Spanish-language content for our existing social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Spanish-language messages are also sent through Twitter. The LAF also created an advertisement that was placed on Facebook and promoted LIVESTRONG.org/Espanol. The advertisement was only available for users who had self-identified themselves as bilingual (Spanish and English) users. Since the launch of the campaign on June 15, 2009, over 200 people have downloaded the English and Spanish widgets and as a result over 12,000 unique views to the widgets have occurred through traffic to sites where they have been placed. Over 5,000 bilingual Facebook users clicked on the LIVESTRONG.org/Espanol advertisement which redirected the user to the LAF's Spanish website becoming the second highest driver of traffic to LIVESTRONG.org/Espanol.