The newsletter
Each post takes one question about cancer or clinical trials and explains it in plain language, with every technical term defined.
The newsletter is written by Oyepeju Abioye-Akintola, MD, MSc, an internal medicine physician training toward thoracic medical oncology and a 2026-2027 Health Equity Fellow with Health Affairs, through its Health Equity Fellowship for Trainees (HEFT). Her fellowship research measures the reading level of oncology clinical trial consent documents, which is the problem the newsletter is written to address.
The posts go further than the cards. They cover what a diagnosis and its stage mean, how treatments work, and how clinical trials are designed, run and reported.
Read on Substack Subscribe free
What the posts are like
- Questions people ask after a cancer diagnosis. The questions that come in the first days, and how to bring them to the care team.
- Cards on the Table. Why the answers are written as cards, and what the deck covers.
- Why clinical trials exist. How medicine moved from individual stories to answers that can be tested.
- Why your doctor isn't allowed to choose your group. What randomization protects you from, and why the choice is taken out of your doctor's hands.
Why it exists
The newsletter is for patients, families, caregivers, and anyone deciding whether to join a clinical trial. Each post starts from the basics and builds up, so a reader with no medical background can follow it, and each is written by a physician whose research focuses on how clearly clinical trial information reaches patients.
For the short version, the cards cover the same ground one question at a time.