During the past few years, the Brazilian government and society have been engaged in planning actions designed to prevent and control several types of cancer that can be either prevented or treated successfully if diagnosed early. However, recent data on cancer mortality rates in Brazil rebut the effectiveness of these actions. The literature shows that psychosocial factors associated with these campaigns have not received sufficient attention from the authorities and campaign producers. This paper analyzes comments by fifteen women undergraduates on seven cancer prevention campaign slogans, assessing their mobilization power on the basis of their association with the representation of cancer as death. The findings suggest an important difference between the impacts of these campaigns and their effective power to mobilize the population to seek treatment and prevention. This leads to the conclusion that psychosocial elements such as the social representation of cancer, self-esteem, relationships between individuality and collectivity, gender discourse and the ideological nature of the slogans must be taken into account when preparing cancer prevention campaigns.
Cancer; Social representations; Ideology; Discourse
