What is Cancer Advocacy?

Advocacy is an activity by an individual or group which aims to influence decisions within political, economic, and social systems and institutions. Health Advocacy supports and promotes patients’ health care rights, and enhances community health and policy initiatives that focus on the availability, safety and quality of care.
The Cancer Alliance has adopted a human- rights based approach to cancer care that acknowledges that access to services is a matter of social justice, and gives voice to the voiceless.

• To be the voice for those who have either been robbed completely of theirs or who aren’t equipped with the resources to raise them.
• To give voice to problems and issues that are ignored, unknown or deliberately hidden from public hearing.
• To equip and empower the voiceless to raise their voices in a way they will be heard.
• To enable the voices being raised to be heard, then listened to – and acted upon.

Conceptually, advocacy fits into a range of activities that include organizing, lobbying, and campaigning.

Organizing is a broad-based activity designed to ensure that the views represented in advocacy come from those who are actually affected by the issue.
Lobbying derives from the Latin word ‘loggia’, a room where one would meet directly with decision-makers to engage in (often private) quality discussions and debate.

Compared to organizing, lobbying takes a more targeted approach and reaches out to fewer people. On the other end of the spectrum, the Latin origin for campaigning is ‘campus’, the wider battlefield.
An advocacy campaign publicly promotes an agenda, involving platforms where a wide audience can hear the advocate’s message.

UNICEF defines advocacy to mean: ‘to call to one’s aid’ or ‘to speak out on behalf of someone.’*