United by Unique
The new world cancer day theme 2025-2027 “united by unique” places people at the center of care and their stories at the heart of the conversation.
Cancer is more than just a medical diagnosis—it’s a deeply personal matter. Behind every diagnosis lies a unique human story. When people are confronted with a cancer diagnosis, they may react with shock, grief, pain, but also acceptance, coping, healing, and more. People living with cancer don’t always feel heard, seen, or understood.
Cancer treatment options are based on biological parameters such as tumor size, growth rate, dissemination across the body, and molecular features. Scientific summaries based on multiple study results from throughout the world are known as medical guidelines, and they present the best proved outcome in each situation.
While all these criteria are vital for effective cancer treatment, there is one more: the person behind the patient.
"Cancer is only a chapter in your life, not the whole story." – Joe Wasser
Care Centered on Patient - Person - People – What´s the Difference?
In healthcare, the term “patient-centered care” is frequently used, although it may also refer to “person-centered” and “people-centered care”. These phrases are commonly used interchangeably. However, they are not synonymous.
Patient-centered care: respects a patient’s feelings, values, and preferences about their own care. It emphasizes the importance of treating patients as partners and can involve shared decision-making. The care is coordinated across different services and providers to help ensure that all aspects of the treatment are aligned, reducing confusion and improving the overall experience.
Patient-centred care focuses specifically on the individual as a patient within the healthcare system.
Person-centered care: expands the focus beyond the patient to the individual as a whole person and considers all aspects of their life, not just their disease. It values people’s unique experiences and wishes, including psychological, social, and spiritual needs.
Person-centered care considers the individual holistically, within the broader context of their life.
People-centered care: takes the most valuable elements of the patient- and person-centered models and places them within the broader context of community. This model takes the widest possible view, as individuals actively participate in their treatment and their experiences and values are heard and respected, while it engages families, social connections, and wider communities as vital pillars of high-quality cancer care.
People-centered care focuses on the health and well-being of entire populations or communities, aiming to improve healthcare systems and access for all.
(source: https://www.worldcancerday.org/)
Collaboration And Connection Are Key
Every approach is necessary for providing comprehensive and effective healthcare. While the World Cancer Day campaign theme emphasizes ‘people-centered care’, it does, of course, include the core aspects and driving force of person- and patient-centered care approaches.
People-centered care reorients healthcare around individuals rather than illnesses. It acknowledges that each individual is unique and prioritizes their needs, listens to their concerns with compassion and understanding, assists them in maintaining autonomy, and allows them to actively engage in the decision-making process rather than merely being passive recipients of care.
People-centered cancer care is a chance to refocus, rewire, and rewrite our understanding of cancer, to embrace people’s uniqueness, and to ensure that everyone is seen for who they truly are and has access to the care they require.
People-centered care acknowledges the value of social connections. It aims to involve individuals, families, and communities outside the clinical environment. Incorporating these links allows for more compassionate and comprehensive treatment that better meets a person’s unique physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.
People are more than merely patients and being informed and involved before they interact with the healthcare system is beneficial. Taking a community-based approach to cancer care increases health literacy and self-care while ensuring that health-care systems match the real-world requirements of the people they serve.
Proven Benefits of People Centered Care
Support for a people-centered care approach improves access to care and provides many positive effects throughout treatment and recovery, leading to improvements in both physical and emotional wellbeing. The World Health Organization stated that developing more integrated people-centered care systems “has the potential to generate significant benefits to the health and healthcare of all people.”
According to studies, integrated people-centered care improves individuals’ well-being during treatment, leads to greater quality care, and increases trust in doctors. It contributes to reducing gaps in service access and delivery, ensuring that everyone gets the care they require, when and where they need it. At the same time, people-centered care may improve efficiency by offering services in the most cost-effective manner while balancing health promotion, prevention, and treatment, as well as minimizing resource waste.
When a compassionate, humanizing, and empowering strategy is fully integrated into a health-care system, it creates a different kind of relationship between patient and provider. It brings everybody closer together, ensuring that no one is left behind.
WorldCancerDay Campaign 2025 – 2027
The campaign will offer a three- year journey from raising awareness to acting:
“Every experience with cancer is unique and it will take all of us, united, to create a world where we look beyond the disease and see the person before the patient.
This World Cancer Day, let’s come together to rewrite the future of cancer care – one where the needs of people and communities come first.”
#UnitedByUnique
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