Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer among women worldwide. In 2022, 2.3 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer. Every minute, four women receive a diagnosis, and one woman dies from the disease. Although breast cancer occurs in every country, global research shows stark inequities in breast cancer awareness, diagnosis, and treatment, which dramatically affect outcomes and chances of survival.
Clear communication is integral to breast cancer awareness, diagnosis, and treatment, making language barriers an obstacle to patient-centricity and effective care. According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), language barriers contribute to lower screening rates for female-specific cancers requiring patient cooperation, resulting in unfavorable outcomes. Multilingual healthcare communication and life sciences localization play a crucial role in breaking down language barriers in breast cancer awareness, global breast cancer research, and access to treatment.
Breast Cancer Is Global, So Is the Need for Localization
While breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer worldwide, transitioning and low-income countries have a disproportionate share of breast cancer deaths. In high-income countries, 83% of diagnosed women survive, while in low-income countries, more than half of women diagnosed with breast cancer die from it. Experts often associate this disparity with challenges in early detection, timely diagnosis, and access to care. Early detection and treatment significantly reduce mortality rates, highlighting the importance of raising breast cancer awareness.
Breast cancer awareness campaigns often overlook the language and cultural nuances that improve the effectiveness of outreach. When teams localize campaigns for specific regions, women can learn important details that often go misunderstood, including:
- The availability of free screening
- That screening is meant for people without breast cancer symptoms to find cancer before any symptoms occur
- The role of screening and early diagnosis in improving survival rates
- How female staff carry out screening, and how modesty can be protected
- That anyone can get breast cancer, regardless of their background
- That cancer screening will not make cancer spread
Focus on Resolving Misconceptions
Socio-cultural beliefs and limited knowledge about higher risk factors among certain ethnic groups also affect screening and treatment rates. Other beliefs include spiritual causes, spider bites, heredity, extreme stress, trauma, infections, diet, or lifestyle. Despite high breast cancer awareness in India, low screening rates continue to result in high mortality. The social stigma of attending breast clinics can be a significant cultural barrier to screening for Indian women.
Erasing these misconceptions requires empathetic communication that prioritizes respect for long-held traditions and beliefs. Medical professionals must understand how cultural nuances affect healthcare decisions and create a dialogue that builds trust. Then they can provide essential information about the role of screening and early treatment in preventing breast cancer deaths.
Making Trials More Inclusive Through Language
Clinical trials for breast cancer treatment studies can test new treatments and medications. They advance successful breast cancer treatment and give patients access to cutting-edge medical interventions that may not be available otherwise. However, women often get excluded from breast cancer trials due to a lack of access to localized materials.
Clear, accessible, and culturally appropriate language should be used in patient-facing materials, including study ads, consent forms, and trial instructions. These can help address concerns and misconceptions, increasing recruitment and retention. For example, fears of ineligibility and worries about getting a placebo are among the top reasons patients don’t enroll in trials.
Clinical trial localization begins with localized documents that can alleviate these fears by using accessible language to describe the requirements and process. When consent forms include details about how research protocols can align with religious practices and explain how placebos in cancer trials are the current standard of care, misconceptions are reduced, improving participation. Inclusive language is also critical to promote recognition that men, although representing less than 1% of cases, can also be affected by breast cancer.
By erasing language and cultural barriers with clinical trial localization, trials can provide more diverse and representative data. Higher participation in unrepresented groups can provide valuable insight about specific risk factors and how they affect the response to new treatments.
Localization Is a Compliance Essential
For breast cancer treatments to reach global markets, accurate localization is non-negotiable. The healthcare and pharmaceutical industries operate on a global scale, allowing essential medicines and treatments to cross geographical borders. Regulatory bodies govern the development, manufacturing, and distribution of medical products and drugs. These regulators require patient labels, instructions for use, and clinical documentation in local languages, with no margin for error.
Here are some concerns:
- Mistranslations in these materials can lead to costly delays, rejections, or even patient harm. A single mistranslated word can change the meaning of a diagnosis, treatment protocol, or medication dosage.
- Regulations regarding recruitment materials and consent forms in clinical trials, drug labeling and packaging, and promotional materials vary across borders.
- Organizations must also comply with data privacy regulations to protect personal health information against breaches and misuse.
Precise localization is essential to avoid non-compliance penalties and poor treatment outcomes. Localization goes beyond translating product information to encompass the adaptation of linguistic and cultural requirements of different markets. Meticulous checks by subject matter experts and native speakers ensure that content is accurate, consistent, and culturally appropriate. These efforts help in spreading breast cancer awareness and protecting the safety of all patients.
Language Builds Trust and Improves Outcomes
When materials reflect patients’ own language and culture, awareness and action increase. From breaking down medical terms into easily understood ideas to addressing cultural sensitivities, developing materials that inform patients in a language they understand is critical for improving breast cancer outcomes. This is especially true for underserved or low-literacy populations, where culturally appropriate materials aren’t typically available.
Approximately 22% of patients in breast surgical oncology clinics have low health literacy, and 19% of breast cancer patients have inadequate functional health literacy. Inaccurate translation and cultural localization can contribute to low health literacy, preventing women from learning about the importance of screening and treatment. In these areas, linguistically and culturally appropriate materials can make the difference between screening and silence.
Localization is a human act of communication that connects people with care, knowledge, and dignity. When medical communications and documentation are localized to align with regional language and cultural nuances, patients are more likely to receive prompt and attentive care, leading to improved outcomes. Language is the key to ensuring women understand the connection between screening and early treatment and improved chances of survival.
Breast cancer doesn’t speak one language, and neither should the fight against it. Ending disparities in breast cancer mortality begins with breast cancer awareness promoted with life sciences localization. It also requires multilingual healthcare communication presented with empathy to promote patient-centricity. Localization brings global innovation closer to home, making clinical breakthroughs more inclusive, equitable, and trusted. In Pink October—and every month—language can be a bridge to care. Are you seeking ways to make your global health communications more inclusive and effective? Talk to our Life Sciences experts about localization that empowers every patient, everywhere.
