“Patient stories, as you know, can either make or break a story,” said Laurie McGinley, a former health and science editor at The Washington Post who is now on the board of Patient Action for Cancer Research, or PACR, a new advocacy organization aimed at organizing and amplifying patient voices in an effort to protect life-saving federal health research.
In last week’s issue, The Cancer Letter reporter Sara Willa Ernst wrote about how PACR is building a repository of patient stories to better connect policymakers to the people most affected by their decisions.
On this week’s episode of The Cancer Letter Podcast, Sara spoke with Jacquelyn Cobb, associate editor of The Cancer Letter, and McGinley.
In the episode, affectionately dubbed “the Ladies’ Podcast,” Sara, Jacquelyn, and McGinley talk about Sara’s process of reporting and writing the story, the role of a group like PACR in the current political climate, and how McGinley—who was part of a team at The Wall Street Journal that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on AIDS—decided to join the board of PACR.
“From a professional standpoint, and I guess this takes us into the wider discussion, it's just so obvious that it's important to have patients and patients stories at the center of this debate, this very difficult debate that's going on now about funding research of all different kinds, especially cancer research,” McGinley said. “And this is not news to anyone in journalism or anyone in the cancer community. We're not trying to preach to the choir, and people already know this, but we're just trying to make it somewhat easier and to augment efforts to do this.”
Other stories mentioned in this podcast include:
Former NCI official's nonprofit seeks to tell the stories of cancer patients
U.S. government shuts down Impact on NCI uncertain as administration threatens more RIFs
Sexual and gender minoritized cancer patients deserve better
Seeding NCORPs with academically-focused oncologists can advance the national research agenda
A transcript of this podcast is available: https://cancerletter.com/podcastc/20251008-LaurieMcGinley/