"Out of the Blue"- Kidney Cancer By Kathleen Hoffman, PhD MSPH Of the over 1 million cancers diagnosed each year in the US, around 3 percent are kidney cancers.1 This relatively rare cancer is twice as likely to develop in men as women. Around 73,000 new cases will occur in the [...]
HPV is Not in Scarlet Letters: Cervical Cancer Patients Being Stigmatized By Kathleen Hoffman, PhD, MSPH Imagine being given a diagnosis of cervical cancer. That’s bad enough. Now, imagine that it comes with the assumption you got it by sleeping around. In 1983 and 1984, Dr. Harold zur Hausen isolated Human [...]
Getting Told You're Making It All Up By Kathleen Hoffman, PhD, MSPH Imagine going to see a doctor when you’re exhausted and enduring multiple kinds of pain, and they recommend a “psych” evaluation. When they “can’t find anything,” the medical professional you looked to for help decides you must be making [...]
Why peer-to-peer online patient communities are important to patients, caregivers and pharma By Kathleen Hoffman, PhD What do patients and caregivers say about online patient communities? Inspire posts, podcasts, and patient advocates concur on the powerful and varied benefits, especially in research collaborations and as a trusted source of treatment and clinical [...]
1.6 Million People Accelerate Medical Progress When Brian Loew founded Inspire in 2005, he never dreamed of its impact on members, on himself and on the people who worked with him. “When someone tells a story about how, by connecting with others, they learned that a certain treatment was possible. And they [...]
