Breastcancer.org Launches New Platform

Breastcancer.org — the leading global resource for breast health and breast cancer education — partnered with Work & Co to launch a new digital platform for patients and their caregivers.

The new experience focuses on improved technology and search functionality, and a more personalized user experience to help people find information tailored to their specific breast cancer situation. A chief goal was achieving a calm, directed experience to ensure users can easily uncover resources they need — whether they’re researching risk factors, were recently diagnosed, completed treatment, or are living with metastatic breast cancer.

“A cancer diagnosis can be overwhelming, frightening, and confusing,” said Hope Wohl, the organization’s CEO. “Treatment decisions often need to be made quickly – and decisions need to be informed by trusted resources. An essential question we ask ourselves every day is how quickly can we get critical information to the people who need it most? This new platform is the answer.”

New simple-to-navigate sections include: “Newly diagnosed”; “In Treatment”; “Finished my treatment”; “Living with metastatic disease”; “Concerned about my risk”; and “Caring for someone.” The Breastcancer.org community offers peer-to-peer support, while content addresses all facets of breast cancer —and takes into account diverse learning styles— through medically-reviewed articles, videos, photo galleries, checklists, and episodes of The Breastcancer.org Podcast. Topics cover a wide-range of issues like breast cancer risk, diagnosis, treatment, survivorship, managing life and relationships during and after cancer, health equity, and more.

Added Wohl: “From the start, the vision for redesigning the Breastcancer.org website has been driven by our mission to help everyone affected by breast cancer. The team at Work & Co understood the need and delivered a new digital experience that beautifully represents the varied experiences of people with breast cancer.”

Said Lauren Shapiro, Group Design Director at Work & Co: “We were able to leverage Breastcancer.org's strong relationship with users, especially those traditionally excluded from access to health literacy, to learn from their expertise and experience navigating challenges. This informed design and engineering decisions including how we structured the site, transparently collected data, and aesthetic choices like prioritizing legibility and high-contrast.”

Longtime visitors to Breastcancer.org will also notice an update to the colors used throughout the website. This change was made to create an inclusive and welcoming environment for the people who don’t feel represented by the pink traditionally associated with the disease, including male and non-binary members of the Breastcancer.org community whose insights helped influence this design choice.

Work & Co led information architecture, content strategy, design, front-end development and quality assurance, while its unit Acknowledge Digital led SEO strategy. It was built using Contentful and Amazon Web Services, and Shift Lab led back-end development.

Since its founding in 2000 by chief medical officer Marisa C. Weiss, M.D., Breastcancer.org has reached 194 million people worldwide. Visit Breastcancer.org for more information.

Read more in Fast Company.