Nicole, Trinidad & Tobago
Beyond the Scar: Care at the Centre on World Cancer Day
World Cancer Day creates space each year for global reflection on cancer, drawing attention to awareness, early detection, and survival.
These conversations matter deeply. Alongside them, many people living with and beyond cancer continue to ask another essential question.
What happens next is care.
On World Cancer Day, a private, invitation-only morning gathering in Port of Spain, Trinidad offered a different response.
The short-film premiere of Beyond the Scar - Film Nine marked the first film of its kind in the Caribbean to centre cancer care as lived experience, positioning care itself as the narrative rather than an outcome or addendum.
The screening created space to understand care as shared responsibility and daily practice.
Curated and led by Nicole Joseph-Chin, the screening and reception formed part of the Beyond the Scar Anthology, a body of work grounded in Caribbean and Global South realities.
The film explores the future of care - recovery, dignity, and survivorship within small island contexts, where care is often informal, deeply personal, and carried long after treatment ends.
By foregrounding care rather than clinical milestones, the film introduces a new narrative framework for cancer storytelling in the Caribbean and the Global South.
It shifts the lens from treatment alone to the lived realities of returning, rebuilding, navigating, and sustaining wellbeing over time.
The gathering was intentionally designed as a non-clinical, grassroots space where survivors at different stages of their journeys were present, including those newly diagnosed and those thriving many years beyond treatment. This reflected the spirit of United by Unique, the World Cancer Day 2026 theme, honouring individual experience while holding shared space.
The diversity of experiences reflected the continuity of care required, particularly in breast cancer.
Following the film premiere, participants gathered in an intimate circle-style sharing session.
Stories were offered freely, silence was honoured carefully, and emotion was visible and held with care.
In that shared space, it became clear that cancer touches every family and that care is most powerful when it is witnessed and held collectively.
Prayerful greetings from Father Robert Christo, shared and led by Denise Scott, opened the gathering, grounding the morning in reflection. The event was coordinated with precision in stewardship, ensuring the experience unfolded with intention and respect for community presence.
Joseph-Chin, whose global leadership includes affiliation with the Vital Voices Global Partnership, has long advocated for care to be recognised as a designed and protected system rather than an informal afterthought.
On World Cancer Day, the film and the gathering together offered a practical demonstration of that principle, showing how care can be intentionally shaped, held, and sustained beyond institutional settings.
The outcome of the day was not only a film premiere, but a shared recognition. Care is not secondary to survival. It is central to it.
Beyond the Scar will continue to explore how care is lived, shaped, and sustained beyond diagnosis.
The conversations sparked through this work form part of an ongoing mission to place care at the centre of people-centred cancer systems, grounded in lived experience and carried forward through community, practice, and global dialogue.