Crowdfunding for lung cancer costs.

Abstract

e18340 Background: Online crowdfunding, where individuals create campaigns to solicit donations, has grown as an avenue to combat the financial toxicities of cancer. The online platform GoFundMe hosts more than 80% of the global market for crowdfunding and has raised over US $5 billion from more than 50 million donors. While medical expenses are the leading cause of crowdfunding campaigns, limited research is available on the use of crowdfunding for cancer costs. Further, no studies have evaluated the use of crowdfunding for patients with lung cancer. Methods: In January 2019, we reviewed the first 200 consecutive campaigns that resulted for “lung cancer” on GoFundMe. Campaigns were included for analysis if their description stated funds were to be used for medical costs for a patient with lung cancer in the United States. Standardized data was collected from each campaign. Descriptive statistics were used to aggregate results. Multivariable linear regression analysis were performed to examine predictors of funds raised, adjusting for campaign duration. Results: The 157 included campaigns raised a total of US $1.2 million (mean $8,364) from 11,919 donors (median 53). Compared to a similar 2018 study, our study showed lung cancer campaigns raised less than breast cancer (mean $16,026) but more than prostate cancer (mean $1,449) campaigns. Nine campaigns that were seeking funds for alternative treatment raised a total of $119,660 (mean $13,296). Narratives of financial need that were significantly associated with greater funds raised were family financial need (+$7,416), medical costs not covered by insurance (+$7,369), and the campaign stating the patient was a never-smoker (+$8,162) (all P values < 0.05). Conclusions: Lung cancer has received less research funding relative to other cancer types and our study suggests a similar disparity with crowdfunding for medical costs. The “blame-the-victim” attitude that contributes to this funding disparity also exists within lung cancer crowdfunding as evidenced by the significantly greater amount of funds raised for campaigns that explicitly stated the patient was a non-smoker. Efforts to study crowdfunding for cancer costs should address the ethical implications of exacerbating funding disparities and funding for alternative treatments.

Exploring Patient-Reported Costs Related to Hepatitis C on the Medical Crowdfunding Page GoFundMe®

“…GoFundMe ® pages that included a description of how the patients were exposed to the virus and included more information about all costs were associated with higher levels of donations received. This supports the notion that patients seeking financial support for medical conditions on crowdfunding sites are attempting to make a case demonstrating 'deservingness', and avoid disclosing information that may lead to potential donors to 'blame the victim' when searching pages to support [13].…”

“…In the case of GoFundMe ® crowdfunding, patients with highly stigmatized conditions may attempt to craft a message or request that reflects this similar type of bias. This study provides additional evidence that there may be disparities and equity concerns with the use of GoFundMe ® crowdfunding for health services, as patient groups with less personal appeal or social standing may be further disadvantaged when seeking financial support from the public [ 4 , 11 – 13 ]. A large majority of HCV patients in our sample did not disclose the source of their infection as a component of their page description.…”

“…While crowdfunding may offer benefit to some patients, there may be equity concerns when considering it may advantage wealthier patients with the means to utilize online networks, patient groups with higher personal appeal or social standing, or patients with health conditions that may be interpreted as demonstrating a higher level of deservingness [ 4 , 11 , 12 ]. In an analysis of lung cancer crowdfunding pages, authors found that pages that explicitly state the patient was not a smoker were more successful, suggesting a ‘blame the victim’ attitude may have contributed to fundraising disparities [ 13 ]. In addition, beyond advantaging those with more wealth and socioeconomic status, some argue that medical crowdfunding perpetuates systemic injustices [ 14 ].…”

Thematic and Demographic Analysis of Crowdsourcing Practices for Plastic Surgery

“…Our hypothesis was that demographic variables such as sex and race as well as thematic variables mentioned in the narrative text would be associated with campaign success. Consistent with previous studies, we expected that White male individuals would be most successful 3–6 …”

Crowdfunding for Islamic Banking and Finance Research: Model and Potential Research Interests

“…However, crowdfunding is less disclosed as an alternative in research funding especially in the field of IBF. The current usage of crowdfunding as a research funding focuses only on medical (Aleksina et al, 2019), scientific (Henry et al, 2019), nursing (Hopkins & Kooken, 2019) and wellknown at the outside countries such as US (Cummings et al, 2019;Nguyen et al, 2019) and UK (Gallerani et al, 2019), but not in Malaysia (Salim & Kasim, 2019).…”