The Cancer Letter staff were finalists for six 2024 Dateline Awards from the Washington, DC, Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists—three for journalism, and three for design—and won first place for two.
The Cancer Letter’s entries recognized by SPJ include series, opinion writing, commentary, illustration, and infographics.
This is the fifth consecutive year The Cancer Letter has won an award for infographics, and the seventh consecutive year The Cancer Letter has won first-place awards for illustration.
In July and August 2023, The Cancer Letter covered the potential for discrimination against LGBTQ+ patients with cancer in the aftermath of the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in 303 Creative LLC. v. Elenis (The Cancer Letter, July 14, 2023) and the more than 500 legislative proposals in 49 states targeting trans people (The Cancer Letter, Aug. 11, 2023).
This series delved into the impact this may have on health disparities within the LGBTQ+ community.
“What we’ve heard really loud and clear is that the Supreme Court has just moved out of step with a body of legal precedent and the opinions of the rest of the country and made it legal for a business to discriminate against us,” NFN Scout, executive director of the National LGBT Cancer Network, said to The Cancer Letter at the time. “While the opinion is a very narrow one, its impact—as far as sending a message that it’s OK to discriminate—is exceptionally large.”
In the series, Clifford Hudis, CEO of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, cited evidence suggesting that people who face more social stress have greater overall illness burden and worse outcomes.
“Any action, even broadly, that erodes anti-discrimination protections, has the potential to exacerbate those existing disparities and worsen a community’s access to services,” Hudis said.
Recently, the American Cancer Society confirmed this in a first-of-its kind study published May 31 in Cancer. (The Cancer Letter, May 31, 2024)
“One of the biggest take-aways from our report is that LGBTQ+ people are probably at higher risk for cancer, yet experience multiple barriers to high-quality healthcare access like discrimination and shortfalls in provider knowledge of their unique medical needs,” Rebecca Siegel, senior scientific director, cancer surveillance at ACS and senior author of the study, said in a statement. “Everyone deserves an equal opportunity to prevent and detect cancer early, which is why it’s so important to remove these roadblocks for this population.”
Read more of The Cancer Letter’s ongoing coverage of LGBTQ+ issues.
Dec. 21, 2023, marked the beginning of The Cancer Letter’s 50th anniversary year. Jerry D. Boyd ran the first printing of a little newsletter that would become The Cancer Letter.
The first issue was dated Dec. 21, 1973.
In the 50 years since that first issue, The Cancer Letter has had a unique role in the field, and recapping it is akin to writing a history book.
In an editorial commemorating the anniversary, The Cancer Letter recapped a history of oncology, as seen in real time through The Cancer Letter’s headlines. (The Cancer Letter, Dec. 21, 2023).
Another entry recognized by SPJ was a June 2023 editorial about the Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health struggling to maintain its Comprehensive designation.
The editorial followed up on a story in The Cancer Letter that reported that members of the center’s External Advisory Board were urging the leadership of the parent institution to act fast (The Cancer Letter, June 2, 2023)
This coverage sparked a controversy, eliciting multiple responses.
All of this raised a broader question in the mind of Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter: Should journalists report on matters that involve EABs? (The Cancer Letter, June 9, 2023)
“We at The Cancer Letter have no plans to start covering the EABs the way we cover NCAB and ODAC,” Goldberg writes.
The leadership at UCSD Moores has since changed.
Journalism awards:
- Series, Newsletter/Trade Publications, finalist: Alexandria Carolan, “Court decisions threaten LGBTQ+ patients with cancer.” This series includes:
- Editorial/Opinion Writing, Newsletter/Trade Publications, finalist: Paul Goldberg, “Should journalists report on matters that involve EABs?”
- Commentary and Criticism, Newsletter/Trade Publications, finalist: Katie Goldberg, “The Cancer Letter turns 50: Documenting half a century of cancer progress“
Design awards:
- Art/Photo Illustration, Newsletter/Trade Publications, first place: Katie Goldberg, “Advocacy, War, and NCI Designation: Illustrating Oncology in 2023”
- Art/Photo Illustration, Newsletter/Trade Publications, finalist: Katie Goldberg, “The seven deadly sins sponsors commit again and again at FDA presentations”
- Infographic, Newsletter/Trade Publications, first place: Jacqueline Ong, “Oncology Infographics: Equity, Access, and Screening”
