Impact of Media on Childhood Cancer Stigma

Childhood cancer survivors (CCSs) exhibit worse psychosocial outcomes than their siblings or age-matched controls. Some of these difficulties may be due to public stigma, the beliefs and attitudes that the public holds about CCSs and cancer in general. In particular, media has portrayed pediatric cancer as being highly associated with death and emphasized the otherness of CCSs. To investigate the power of media on cancer-related stigma, we conducted a randomized trial. Participants either read an article in which a pediatric cancer patient survives or does not survive their disease. Participants responded to measures of stigma before and after reading the article. Participants also completed measures of entertainment education after reading the article. We conducted a 2 (time) x 2 (groups) repeated measures analysis of variance and found that family stigma decreased significantly in the death condition. Additionally, we conducted t tests to determine that the article in the death condition was rated as significantly more representative of a pediatric cancer experience, significantly more enjoyable and entertaining, and participants had significantly higher character identification with the parent than the survival article. We conducted a mediation analysis to determine whether character identification was influencing the change in family stigma from pre- to posttest and found the mediation pathway was not significant. These results indicate that media has the potential to change stigmatizing attitudes held about cancer patients and their families.