Your Voice Should Never Cost You Your Privacy

Asking someone to share a cancer experience is asking for trust.

The story may include moments of fear, financial hardship, discrimination, emotional distress, family strain, or treatment decisions that still feel deeply personal.

People deserve to know that their experiences will be treated with care.

That is why trust and privacy are not administrative details of the 1,000 Voices for Cancer Equity™ campaign. They are part of the campaign’s commitment to equity.

Designed to listen without demanding your identity

The survey is designed to collect responses anonymously. It asks for the first three digits of a ZIP code rather than a full ZIP code, allowing the campaign to understand broad geographic patterns without pinpointing a participant’s exact location.

The survey focuses on experiences: access to care, barriers, treatment, emotional wellbeing, financial impact, clinical-trial access, and what participants want the cancer community to understand.

The goal is not to identify who said what.

The goal is to see what is happening, where patterns are emerging, and what needs to change.

Before participating, respondents should review the information on the survey’s opening page so they understand the purpose of the project and can make an informed choice about taking part.

Why trust matters in cancer equity

Communities do not owe institutions their stories.

For many people—especially those from communities that have experienced medical racism, exclusion from research, discrimination, or dismissal—hesitation is not a lack of engagement. It may be the result of experience.

Trust cannot be demanded. It must be earned through clarity, respect, transparency, and responsible use of what people choose to share.

The 1,000 Voices campaign begins from that understanding.

We are asking people to contribute their experiences because lived knowledge can make gaps in care more visible. In return, we have a responsibility to explain why the information is being collected and to handle the resulting insights in a way that serves the communities who made the work possible.

You control whether you participate

Taking part is your choice.

You do not have to speak for your family, your racial or ethnic community, your diagnosis, or every person who has experienced cancer. You are invited to share only your own perspective.

There is no perfect answer and no requirement to turn pain into inspiration.

Honest responses—positive, negative, complicated, or unfinished—are valuable because real cancer experiences are rarely simple.

Listening with care

Better cancer data should never come at the expense of the people behind it.

We can build evidence while protecting dignity. We can identify patterns without reducing people to data points. We can ask difficult questions while respecting the boundaries of those who answer them.

That is what it means to create data with a heartbeat.

The survey opens August 1 and takes approximately 10–12 minutes to complete.

Learn more before participating: 1000voices.unitedcolorsofcancer.org

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