Patient Support
With grateful thanks to our sponsor
J&J partnered with two leading experts to create Tasting Notes – the first video-based recipe platform designed to help cancer patients adapt to taste changes.
Grant Achatz is the world-renowned chef and co-owner of the 3-star Michelin restaurant Alinea. He’s also a cancer survivor who temporarily lost his sense of taste entirely due to treatment. Partnering with him is Abbey Reiser, a registered dietitian specialising in oncology. Together, they transform culinary expertise, nutritional science, and first-hand taste loss experience into engaging patient entertainment.
Tasting Notes provides practical and exciting tips to help patients rediscover the joy of eating.
Judges Comments
Tasting Notes is a highly relevant and empathetic campaign that addresses a genuine unmet need for people living with cancer who experience changes in taste after treatment. It recognises how this can affect appetite, nutrition, and emotional wellbeing, then responds with a solution that restores a sense of agency and enjoyment around food. Partnering with a Michelin-starred chef who had lost his sense of taste lends the work credibility, while beautifully shot videos and recipes help it reach, and resonate with, a wide audience. The idea may be simple, but the execution is thoughtful and accessible, making a complex and often-overlooked side effect feel acknowledged and understood in a very watchable, empowering and educational way.
Being deeply rooted in insights from cancer patients about their sense of taste, judges thought that this is a delightful solution, beautifully delivered and with clear impact for its intended audience. Rather than over-medicalising the issue, the campaign offers practical, human support that feels immediately useful in day-to-day life. It demonstrates how creativity can meaningfully improve quality of life, not just raise awareness. Overall, this is a well-judged piece of work that combines strong patient insight with utility – all served to the highest Michelin Star quality, wrapped in emotional blanket, with a sprinkle of visually stunning execution, delivered by the most qualified person for the job.
Zuleika Burnett, Independent
“Still Loved” transformed one of the most isolating experiences a family can face into a shared, supported journey of remembrance. Centred on an interactive digital memorial website, the initiative offered parents a safe space to honour their baby through a personalised star within the Still Loved Nebula – a poetic symbol that every life, however brief, still shines.
Beyond memorialisation, the site provided practical resources, conversation guidance, and downloadable cards for key moments. Thousands engaged within hours, building a global constellation of remembrance. “Still Loved” turned silence into connection, and grief into a supported, enduring tribute.
For the 50 children in the UK on treatment for the rare disease Neurofibromatosis 1, education was a major barrier to adherence. Written materials were failing to connect with these young patients, many of whom have learning difficulties. We realised what they truly needed wasn’t more information, but a friend.
So, we created FYBO, a set of 50 unique toy companions – one for each child. Through augmented reality, FYBO transformed from a toy into a personal guide, turning scary medical information into an interactive adventure and empowering children to take control of their health.
Every COPD exacerbation matters. Each can cause irreversible lung damage – yet 40% go unreported. This patient programme, created in collaboration with the Roche Global COPD Patient Council, was designed to change that.
It’s built on the deep behavioural insight that people with COPD often know when something’s wrong – but self-doubt creeps in, and they talk themselves out of acting.
“When your COPD symptoms get worse, talk yourself into taking action” is a programme designed to help people with COPD recognise worsening symptoms early, ensure they’re confident talking to their HCP, and empower them to take control before lasting damage occurs.
The cruel reality of breast cancer is that the first years after remission are when cancer is most likely to return. But after all they’ve been through, how do you ask patients to take more treatment to stop cancer returning?
We used the real words of real women who are already living post-remission to motivate others to talk to their doctor about risk of recurrence and additional treatment, so they can keep prevailing over breast cancer. The campaign resonated with women with breast cancer, with searches for “early breast cancer recurrence” increasing by 200% on the launch of the campaign.
“The Unmentionables” is a patient-driven campaign that empowers men with prostate cancer to speak openly about side effects that are too often overlooked or endured in silence, including incontinence and sexual dysfunction.
Through a podcast series co-designed to emulate the feeling of a support group, along with a personalised interactive discussion guide, the initiative helps remove the stigma attached to the “unmentionables” so that men and their loved ones can have more informed and honest conversations with each other and their doctors.
