Josh Dougherty is a brand strategist, speaker, and the founder and CEO of A Brave New, a Seattle-based branding agency that crafts bold and memorable healthcare brands. They have specific expertise in healthcare technology, hospitals and specialty care providers, and healthcare nonprofits. Josh has 15 years experience building new brands from scratch, refreshing existing brands and building strategies to bring those brands to life in the market.
Josh Dougherty:
Welcome to A Brave New Podcast. This is a show about branding and marketing in the healthcare space. But more than that, it's an exploration of what it takes to create brands that will be remembered and how marketing can be a catalyst for those brands' success. I'm Josh Dougherty, your host. Let's dive in.
Welcome back to another episode of A Brave New Podcast. And today I'm really excited to have you along to do something a little bit different. Last week, I had the pleasure of being in Toronto for the NACCDO CMCA annual conference. And if you're not familiar, this is really the preeminent annual conference from a marketing and fundraising perspective for the cancer research space in the United States and Canada. It's put on annually by NACCDO, who is the National Association of Cancer Center Development Officers and the CMCA, the Cancer Marketing & Communications Association.
And these two associations really are the main association for National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated cancer centers around the country, as well as some cancer centers in Canada. And it is an opportunity for people to connect with other professionals in the space. And for A Brave New specifically, it's something that we go to every year and sponsor every year because of this space that we've worked in frequently in the past and hope to continue to do great work in in the future. And really, for me, as I go, it's a chance to do a couple things. First off, learn about what's going on in the space, hear about the latest in how people are communicating or raising money around cancer research and about breakthroughs and other things that are happening in that space. It's also a chance to, I think, reconnect with people that I've met and gotten to know over the years and spend some time with them.
And really, I think, finally, it's a chance for us to come back from that conference and really amplify and spread the word about cancer research, which is so vital. Now, this is a pretty niche area, but I wanted to spend an episode talking about my takeaways from the conference. And I think they're applicable both to people who are working in this specific space—this will be really relevant to those who are working in that space—but also more broadly. And the reason why I think these takeaways are more broad is I think healthcare practitioners across the board probably struggle with or can learn from some of these takeaways beyond just those who are working in the cancer space because a lot of these cancer centers are doing work in large matrix cancer centers, where they're working with the children's hospital or with the university health system or some other hospitals.
So these communicators are working on how do we convey value, engage with patients, et cetera, in a space where they're managing multiple brands and how they intersect. And I think, also, the principles of storytelling and the takeaways that I'll talk about today really are universally applicable for people who are working in the healthcare space today. And so I want to chat through really probably eight takeaways during the conversation today and give you a little bit of an idea of what I think we can learn from the things that I heard at the conference and what the implications are.
And I want to make a special [inaudible 00:03:51] before I dive in, that these are by no means meant to be exhaustive takeaways. It's simply impossible for me or anyone else to be everywhere at the conference. So please don't take this as the only takeaways. And I think the other thing that I'd say is that I've tried to be really careful when I'm quoting stats or when I'm talking about specific types of treatment to be accurate throughout the podcast, but also know that I am not a medical professional. And so trust but verify is what I would say, but I’m going to try to be really careful with those stats so we're saying the right thing or being accurate.
And ultimately, I hope that these takeaways can be a glimpse of the takeaways and showcase some of the things we'll be thinking about in the coming months and that cancer center marketers, fundraisers will be thinking about as they continue to tell this important story of why cancer research is important, how it connects into the care that so many Americans receive when they get cancer, and what the path forward looks like for 2026 and beyond. So by way of intro, that's where I wanted to touch on, but I think let's dive into the specific takeaways. I think the biggest takeaway, and that's why I'll talk about it as the first one, is that it's a must for cancer centers and their supporters to talk about the importance of cancer research. And if we wanted to put this another way, we might say that science needs to do a better job of selling the value of itself.
Over the last 30 years, there have been, maybe 40 years, incredible strides in cancer research. A couple stats to share with you from the American Cancer Society are one, that as a result of cancer research, the cancer mortality rate has declined by 34% from 1991 through 2022. This is massive progress in allowing more people to survive cancer, continue to live full lives after cancer, et cetera. And if you look at another stat, like as of 2026, approximately 70%, that’s 7 in 10 people diagnosed with cancer in the US lived for five years after their diagnosis. This is a huge improvement. In the 1970s, the stat was around 50%. And so again, you're seeing the breakthrough of newer, better treatments, great science leading to huge real-life outcomes because as we think about each of these things, this is the decline in the cancer mortality rate you can talk about it in terms of a statistic, but it really means that loved ones are getting a diagnosis and not dying from their cancer.
They're living longer, they're having more chances to spend with their loved ones, et cetera. And this is really huge. But despite these amazing stats, we've seen over the last 18 months in the United States, cancer centers have been facing jeopardized federal funding. I think it remains somewhat stable now, but there's been a lot of conversation around which grants should be paid out, how should they be paid out, et cetera. And it's really vital for us as communicators, those who are working at cancer centers and those who work in and around them, to be sharing about the value of research. Because, by telling the stories that prove the value of this cancer research, we can share with others why this is so important, why it's important to give money to cancer research, why it's important to advocate with your representatives and other people in government to make sure that cancer research is maintained or funding is maintained.
And I think there are a couple really cool examples of this if you want to look into it. One is two specific campaigns I would speak about or mention—Speak Up for Cancer Research, a campaign run by Huntsman Cancer Institute who we've worked with in the past. And then one we haven't worked with, Roswell Park, but they have a Research Matters social media campaign where they're telling stories about the importance of cancer research. And my key takeaway from this conversation is there needs to be these specific campaigns and this specific work, but also we need to work on a combined national approach to elevate all the voices around cancer research because the reality is that most people in the United States, including me and my family, have experienced the impact of cancer, and it's through cancer research that we can all have a greater hope to spend more time with those we care about.
So that's the first takeaway. Cancer research is super important, and we need to be trumpeting both the value of it and the amazing outcomes that it drives so that we can continue to get more breakthroughs, find more cures, and make sure less and less people are dying from this disease.
Takeaway two is about how we've seen the information environment change in our culture and our society. There's an age of, and this has probably been happening over the last 15 years, but accelerated by AI and by generative AI and AI search tools, that we really live in a time when information dissemination has really broken down. I think if any of you have been listening to this and heard my episode about the Edelman Trust Barometer, you would probably remember a little bit of this from that conversation. But we have all, as a society, begun to get our information from specific areas or specific news sites or social media accounts that really mean that, as a result, there isn't like a centralized place or source of truth to go to find information for everything.
And so in the face of this, I think another takeaway that I had was the cancer centers can play a vital role in bringing correct information forward to anyone dealing with cancer, that they can be that trusted source in a time when people are Googling to find information about their cancer diagnosis. They're asking ChatGPT, they're asking Claude, they're asking Perplexity, any one of these chatbots, they're seeing stuff come up in their social media feed. They aren't sure what's what or what's true or what isn't true. And I think, as a result, if cancer centers can effectively break through the plane and do effective communications, show up in front of people, they can really position themselves as the source of real information, unbiased information, and accurate information about how to deal with your cancer diagnosis, if you have one, how to get the right treatment, and how to achieve the best outcomes.
And the reason behind this is NCI-designated cancer centers are the places where the most rigorous science and research is happening. They have really multidisciplinary teams working to solve and bring cures forward, and they can share knowledge amongst all the centers or other NCI-designated centers, cancer centers. So this gives them a unique ability to speak to not only the most important things that you need to know about your cancer diagnosis, if you have cancer, but also how to get the right treatment, where to get the right treatment, all these things. And what this means for me is that cancer marketing professionals, cancer fundraising professionals really need to double down on sharing the value and the position of NCI-designated cancer centers as information hubs, as this place to get unparalleled expertise. You need to trumpet the outcomes that come out of those cancer centers.
And we need to use comms to share this important stuff. I think it's easy to think like someone, of course, they look to us for unbiased information. We're an NCI-designated cancer center. We're someone who is grounded in research. We're a scientific organization. Of course, people will come to find answers from us, et cetera. And I think that is a dangerous assumption and it's important that we are out there with a proactive message rather than just assuming people will find a cancer center to get the information they need and instead share why you should trust the information that a cancer center is sharing over others, why you're going to get the best care there, why the outcomes are going to be the best, how the science will drive those outcomes. Being more explicit and owning this place of leadership is going to ensure that the most people can benefit from the amazing work that people are doing in this space.
So that's the other takeaway. We need to move beyond communicating just information, and we need to really communicate the amazing value as an unbiased, accurate, and really real information purveyor with significant expertise that cancer centers can be. So that's takeaway number two. In an age of maybe disinformation and democratized information, cancer centers can play a vital role in bringing correct information to anyone dealing with cancer.
The third takeaway is that uniqueness is difficult to communicate beyond maybe certifications. One of the things I was struck by during the opening of the conference, the opening plenary was a round table discussion with five cancer center leaders, and one of the questions they were asked was around how their center is differentiated from others that exist. And as they spoke, most of the answers that they provided were grounded in the needs of their patients, right?
So they provided specific care to the needs of the patients that live in their catchment areas, and also specific things that are centered around things that NCI-designated cancer centers do very well, like I was talking about in the previous question, things like research, providing excellent care, linking the research to the care. And this got me thinking about, is there even more of an opportunity here? And it may even shift the question that was asked maybe by 20 degrees or by 10 degrees to ask another question and to think about who do we need to differentiate from or who do cancer center marketers and fundraisers need to differentiate from to be effective versus what do they need to communicate? And stick with me as I talk about this. Many NCI-designated cancer centers are really not competing with each other. Maybe they have one or two other cancer centers in their catchment area, but for the vast majority, they have a bit of a dedicated catchment area where they're really providing the best type of care.
And what they're really doing is, need to do to build differentiation is differentiate between them and the smaller facilities that also provide cancer care, but maybe can't provide it at the level that they can. And so I think as we put on our marketing lens and our branding lens for NCI-designated cancer centers, it's important for us to think about how do we highlight the things that you can only get at an NCI-designated cancer center? How do you ensure that people know that you can only get them here? And of course, this needs to be done carefully because ultimately, we're not competing against everyone who does cancer treatment, but we want the people to know where they can get the best treatment and make it accessible for them. We want to encourage everyone who's working toward cures and cancer to continue to do that work.
And so I think the focus needs to be on building in that differentiation and ensuring that people can, not disparaging ever other centers or hospitals that are doing cancer treatment and ensuring that patients are equipped to make decisions and make choices and ultimately ensuring that someone, if they have a complex case of cancer or they want to get the best care, they can clearly articulate why your cancer center provides that best care and why they can trust that it's going to provide that best care and how receiving that best care is going to lead to better outcomes for them, because ultimately for NCI-designated cancer centers for any healthcare organization to be successful, they need to understand what you do, why you stand out differently, and why is it going to matter? It's going to lead to more success, a longer healthier life. People want to know the why.
They're less concerned about the how, especially, I think, in a cancer research situation where many people have seen loved ones, family members, friends go through treatment. But at the same time, I do think we all think of cancer treatment in the day-to-day as things like chemotherapy and radiation. And while these continue to be key elements of the cancer treatment process, we need to also be clear about the advanced treatments that we're able to provide today to ensure that people can come and take advantage of them. So making sure that we're differentiating is the third takeaway.
The fourth one is a little bit different. I'm excited to talk about this because it is the buzzword that exists, but we got some really good concrete examples at the conference of what AI is doing to maybe provide exciting moves forward for the cancer research center space.
I think as we dive in, one of the things that was said frequently during the conference and also really, really true was that we need to make sure that AI is deployed carefully and the first frontier may be in the operation space more than in the care space. But with that said, let's dive into maybe three specific ways that AI is helping to make cancer research and cancer centers get smarter and faster. The first specific way is around screening. And I think as we talk about things like screening, it's important to note that this isn't talking about using AI to screen cancer research without a physician present. We're trying to figure out how do we leverage AI to best screen, best serve more patients to a higher level of quality and make the biggest impact while also keeping the physician centered so they can help provide the best care to a patient.
So one of the areas that was talked about in that opening plenary I just mentioned was how some cancer centers are using it for screening of things like lung cancer. I think the leader of Roswell Park in upstate New York and Buffalo talked about how it's been a huge time saver for them to be able to screen cancer, screen for lung cancer among their patient populations using AI because it allows them to do more work than they could have ever done before but also make sure that they have a physician who's engaged through that process. Another exciting way that was shared during a session around AI and cancer care and cancer research came out of ... Two exciting things that came out of that was one around using AI and machine learning to create a database of clinical trial data for Princess Margaret in Toronto, the cancer center there, to allow physicians, as they're working with their patients, to use this tool that leverages machine learning to narrow down from like the hundreds of clinical trials that are happening to maybe the one or two that their patient is the best candidate for.
This is an operational tool, but think about the amazing ability to get people into the right clinical trials and hopefully advance research while we're also doing some good and transformative work in the lives of the patient by helping them get better. And this is especially an urgent thing because there's a reality that many clinical trials are under-enrolled or there aren't enough people in them, so this could be a way to get more people into them. And the person who was presenting spent time talking about how, if this could be rolled out more broadly than just in one cancer center, it could have amazing outcomes. The third element of AI in cancer care and cancer research was about a tool that's been created, again, out of Princess Margaret and Toronto to help design treatment plans for radiation so that physicians don't have to spend days or hours building out the treatment plan, but machine learning, artificial intelligence can help them design the right treatment plan and then the doctor's role is to choose the treatment plan and implement it.
Now, this has also showed promising results. So I think, again, we're seeing the places where cancer research and cancer care can really be accelerated using AI, especially in areas where there's massive amounts of existing data to use and sift through to inform the work that's happening, and that data is structured enough for AI to leverage. So AI is offering exciting ways to accelerate cancer care, cancer research. That's the fourth takeaway.
And then as we keep going, three more takeaways to share, and these may be a little bit faster. Takeaway five is around collaboration and coordination as the keys for larger matrix cancer centers. And this won't be surprising for anyone who works in these spaces. There are major projects like website redesigns, building a differentiated brand, building, doing content planning to convey a clear and unified and cohesive message. These are really hard for matrix cancer centers.
And if you're not aware of what a matrix cancer center is, let's define that first for you. If you work in one, you probably already know. But a matrix cancer center is an NCI-designated cancer research institution that's integrated within a university. And so often these cancer centers, the cancer center may stand alone, but then it has a university health system that it's integrating with. It has maybe a children's hospital it's integrating with. It's not standalone. And as a result, in these matrix systems, there's a ton of horsepower that's possible, ability to do greater work, do more advanced work, et cetera, but it also becomes way harder for each entity to communicate about itself in a clear and a cohesive way. Because for example, you might have physicians or researchers who are also professors, and as a result, all their information may show up on the university website and it's like, how do we showcase that on the cancer center website?
Or the brand might be subsumed underneath the university brand. So it's like, how do we get people to know about us when we can or really live under the shadow of a larger university brand? And so the big thing around this was I heard numerous presentations on how web design becomes much harder in these situations. Building out a brand that has a clear message becomes much harder when the university, maybe the children's hospital, maybe the cancer center, all have different messages they're trying to communicate, but ultimately, we need to make sure that each organization is having the chance to build brand differentiation for itself and convey the value of this matrix relationship that allows them to do far more than they could on their own. And so what this exposes for me is the need for really enterprise content planning centered around a shared brand value.
And does that mean each entity, the university health system, the children's hospital, the cancer center, all have the same brand? Not really, but it means that we do need to have alignment on what is the architecture? How do they all integrate? How do all of these organizations interrelate with each other? And as they interrelate, how do we talk about each of them to make sure that people understand and clearly can find what they need, whether it's through the university health system, through the cancer center, through the children's hospital, or any number of things. And so my takeaway there was there needs to be more work done at the enterprise level, and this is easy as someone who is a consultant. So know that many of my colleagues who are working in this space day-to-day are trying to do this every day, but working on alignment on message, on channels, on timing, and using enterprise content strategy to get everybody on the same page about the content that's being created, on the same page about the messages that need to be conveyed and orchestrating that experience across channels.
This is pretty complicated, but I think this is where massive amounts of investments are already going and need to continue to go so that we can make sure that these cancer centers that are doing amazing, amazing work can get the word out and get the right patients in the door. So you need to make sure collaboration and coordination are working on hyperdrive inside of these matrix cancer centers. I think everyone who's listening to it who works in one will be like, "Yeah, of course." But that was a key takeaway for me.
And then the final takeaway maybe that I'll highlight here was around findability. So I have seven instead of eight, but the seventh takeaway is really about findability just getting tougher. I think one of these things that is happening on every cancer center website is there's a ton of information and you have to architect the sites to be able to get patients where they're needing to go, giving people the opportunity to find research, giving them the opportunity to find clinical trials, all these things.
And it can be hard to get to the fundamentals of how do we get found today? How do we make sure people coming off the internet can't find us and get in the door, our proverbial door, to the website to start learning about us and seeking help from the cancer center. And on top of this, I think there's a temptation from all cancer centers to have exhaustive information about each type of cancer and each treatment, where this data already exists somewhat on the NCI website and on maybe Mayo Clinic, other areas where they've created large amounts of content. And so I had the chance to go to an amazing presentation from another agency called the Aha Media Group. They do healthcare content strategy, and they talked about how they're shifting, really, people from working on informational keywords to really focusing on mid-level keywords that individual cancer centers can own, things that will drive decisions after someone has become generally aware of the cancer that they have or of the cancer that they care about.
And I think it's important, a key takeaway here was for people to really dial in on what are the outcomes we're trying to drive, who's our audience, and then how do we structure content from a schema, from a keyword, from a readability perspective to ensure that not only can someone find out about you when they type into something like Claude and ask, "How do I get the best treatment in Chicago for my lung cancer?" Making sure that you show up in LLMs using schema, structured data, et cetera, and then ensuring that people can find you. And when they land on the site, they have a cohesive experience that leads from them finding you to landing on the site to booking an appointment or filling out a form, doing whatever they need to get the care they need. But I think this presentation was a wake-up call that people, it's hard to redesign a website and to do amazing work in the cancer center space.
It takes time, but you can't rest on your laurels in between maybe the bigger redesign and not be focused on answer engine optimization and ensuring that your site is answering those key questions that are being asked of ChatGPT, Claude, and even Gemini and Google search to ensure that you're showing up at the top of the page or in those queries inside of one of the answer engines when someone's looking for specifics around getting the right care for their cancer in your space. So with that, I'll wrap up. That's the end of this podcast.
Again, I talked about a number of different takeaways from it being a must that cancer centers need to talk about and trumpet the importance of science and the importance of cancer research, to cancer centers really putting themselves at the center as that source of unbiased, real scientific information about cancer research and care so that people can have a place that they can trust to receive that type of information, to really needing to work on uniqueness and differentiation from other providers of cancer care and other cancer research organizations in your community or catchment area, to making sure we're staying open to AI and the exciting things it's doing while also being careful about using it, to using content planning and content strategy to build collaboration coordination for teams at larger matrix cancer centers, and then finally about findability.
So would love to chat with anyone more about stuff that happened at the conference, but as I close out, I just want to really give a dedication and a, I don't know, raise up and celebrate the people who are doing this work every day. I get to bop in and out, depending on projects, into this space, get to feel really like it's meaningful work to do on a day-to-day basis, and get excited about that. But I'm just inspired and blown away by the people who've dedicated their careers to doing this work, of sharing about the importance of cancer research, sharing about the value of doing amazing cancer care, and doing amazing research about the value it has in people's lives and how it transforms their lives. And so ultimately, as I close out, I want to thank each and every one of those people for their dedication to fighting the good fight to ensure that more of us have more time with our loved ones after a cancer diagnosis.
And thank you for that work. Thank you to all the researchers that are doing that work as well, the clinicians that are providing amazing care. And I look forward to continuing to engage with this community and being with them again next year in Indianapolis for their next annual meeting and annual conference. And with that, I'll talk to you next week.
Thanks for listening to this episode of A Brave New Podcast. Go to abravenew.com for more resources and advice on all things brand. If you enjoyed this episode, show us some love by subscribing, rating, and reviewing A Brave New Podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. A Brave New Podcast is created by A Brave New, a branding agency in Seattle, Washington, that crafts bold and memorable healthcare brands. Our producer is Rob Gregerson.