UX Design · Webflow · Global Nonprofit · 2024

The African Esophageal Cancer Consortium (AfrECC)

Increased donations by 20% and improved access to esophageal cancer education and care by redesigning AfrECC's information architecture and brand experience.

AfrECC website banner

Role

UX Designer

Team

2 UX Designers, 1 UX Researcher

Timeline

10/31/2024 – 12/01/2024

My Contribution

As UX Designer, I led the website's branding and designed half of the homepage and the full Esophageal Cancer page from low-fidelity to high-fidelity. I also collaborated closely with stakeholders to ensure content accuracy and alignment with AfrECC's mission.

Product Overview

AfrECC is a nonprofit focused on raising awareness of esophageal cancer, improving early detection and treatment access, and supporting communities in East Africa through research, education, and fundraising.

AT A GLANCE

20%

Increase in Donations

clearer donation pathways

1 month

Launched on Deadline

shipped on time

Product Preview 👀

Live site - afreccfoundation.org

TL;DR 🧾

AfrECC needed a clearer, more trustworthy digital experience to raise awareness, connect patients to care, and support fundraising. I redesigned the site's structure, content hierarchy, and visual system to make critical health information easier to understand and donations easier to act on.

Context 🌍

Esophageal cancer causes roughly 500,000 deaths annually, with East Africa among the hardest-hit regions. Many cases are diagnosed at advanced stages, leaving patients with limited treatment options and poor survival outcomes.

AfrECC's website needed to support both public education and organizational fundraising while communicating a complex health issue in a way that felt clear, credible, and hopeful.

Problem 🔍

AfrECC needed a digital experience that could do three things clearly:

📚

Educate the public about esophageal cancer

🩺

Help people recognize symptoms and access care information

💝

Inspire donations to support AfrECC's work

The existing experience did not communicate these priorities clearly enough, and the large amount of information risked overwhelming users instead of guiding them.

Constraints & Tradeoffs ⚖️

Several constraints shaped the project direction.

⏰ Tight Timeline

The site needed to be published by December 1, which required narrowing scope and prioritizing the highest-value content.

📋 Content Complexity

Medical information had to remain accurate while still being understandable to broader audiences.

👥 Stakeholder Needs

The site needed to serve multiple audiences - patients, physicians, board members, and potential donors.

Because of these constraints, I focused on three core pages - Home, About AfrECC, and Esophageal Cancer, instead of the original five-page plan.

Solution ✨

I redesigned AfrECC's website to improve clarity, trust, and actionability across three core areas:

💡

Awareness

Educate users about esophageal cancer, including symptoms, risk factors, and treatment options

🏥

Care Access

Make key health information easier to understand and navigate

💰

Support

Strengthen donation calls-to-action and make AfrECC's mission more compelling

Research 🔍

To understand audience needs and stakeholder priorities, we conducted 7 stakeholder interviews with board members, physicians, and members of the African community.

Key Insights

Health information needed to be clearer and more accessible

Donation pathways needed stronger calls to action

The site needed to balance trust and hope

Text-heavy content reduced usability

Design Strategy

Simplify complex health information without losing credibility.

This principle guided the redesign of content hierarchy, navigation, and donation pathways. I also reviewed existing cancer education and nonprofit websites to identify clearer ways to structure health information and build trust.

Design Thinking

Wireframes 🖊️

Early wireframes helped align stakeholders on page structure, content hierarchy, and how to balance education with donation goals.

Major Design Decisions 📦

01

Reducing scope to prioritize the highest-value pages

The original plan included five pages, but a one-month timeline made full delivery impractical.

I narrowed the scope to three core pages - Home, About AfrECC, and Esophageal Cancer - so the team could focus on awareness, care information, and donations first.

Information architecture - final version
Information architecture - initial version

↑ Reduced the site from five planned pages to three core pages.

02

Making medical content easier to understand

Stakeholders needed stronger education around symptoms, risk factors, and treatment - but text-heavy pages risked overwhelming patients.

I restructured the Esophageal Cancer page with clearer hierarchy, visual support, and scannable content blocks to improve comprehension without losing accuracy.

03

Adding FAQ sections to reduce uncertainty

The site had no clear answers to urgent questions - first symptoms, when to seek care, what to expect.

I introduced page-specific FAQ sections so users could quickly find what they needed without reading long paragraphs.

FAQ section on the Esophageal Cancer page

↑ Reorganized complex medical information into clearer, more scannable sections.

↑ Added FAQs to answer urgent patient questions more quickly.

04

Reframing the homepage to build trust and urgency

Initial homepage concepts didn't clearly communicate the scale of the crisis or AfrECC's reach across Africa.

I redesigned the hero to be more direct, added clearer site location indicators, and strengthened content hierarchy to lead with mission and urgency.

Homepage design

↑ Shifted the homepage toward urgency, trust, and clearer mission communication.

05

Building a more cohesive and hopeful brand experience

The site needed a visual identity that felt both medically credible and emotionally supportive, not clinical, not overwhelming.

I led the visual direction using AfrECC's existing visual cues, a softer hopeful color palette, readable sans-serif typography, and clearer emphasis on key messages and calls to action. This system also helped the About AfrECC page communicate the organization's mission, partnerships, and impact more clearly.

Typography design system
Color palette design system

↑ Defined a softer, more hopeful visual system that balanced trust and accessibility.

About AfrECC page design

↑ Clarified AfrECC's mission, partnerships, and impact to build organizational credibility.

Impact 📈

The redesigned site improved both fundraising clarity and access to essential health information.

💸

20% Increase in Donations

The updated information hierarchy and clearer donation pathways made AfrECC's mission easier to understand and support.

🚀

Launched on Deadline

By reducing scope to three high-priority pages, the team shipped a complete and polished site within one month.

🔎

Improved Information Visibility

Risk factors, symptoms, and treatment information became easier to find through clearer navigation and stronger content hierarchy.

Reflection 🪞

🏥 Designing for high-stakes health contexts

This project taught me how to design under a very tight deadline for a health-focused nonprofit. I learned to simplify complex medical information, align with non-technical stakeholders, and make scope decisions that balanced usability, credibility, and delivery speed.

🤝 Trust is a design decision

This project reinforced that designing for information access isn't enough, especially when your audience includes patients, physicians, and donors. Every layout choice, hierarchy decision, and content call had to build credibility and hope at the same time.

🧑‍💻 Clients need clear design communication

AfrECC's board members were not familiar with design conventions, so early wireframes caused confusion when images, text, and layout blocks were not clearly labeled. It reinforced the importance of annotating everything, even when it feels obvious to us.

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AfrECC: Fighting Esophageal Cancer in Africa

The African Esophageal Cancer Consortium (AfrECC) is dedicated to reducing the burden of esophageal cancer in Africa through clinical care, education, prevention and research.

A Critical Health Crisis

Esophageal cancer (EC) claims 500,000 lives annually worldwide, with a high prevalence in Eastern Africa. In 2022 alone, Africa saw 30,000 new cases and 28,000 deaths. Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is one type of esophageal cancer that makes up 85% of EC worldwide and 90% of EC in Africa. Over 90% of EC in the high-risk areas is esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). In Africa, most EC patients present with advanced cancer and live only 3-6 months.

Current AfrECC sites

Ethiopia

Adis Ababa

Uganda

Jinja

Kenya

Bomet
Eldoret
Nairobi

Tanzania

Dar-es-Salaam
Moshi

Zambia

Lusaka

Malawi

Lilongwe
Blantyre

Mozambique

Maputo

South Africa

Johannesburg
East London
Pietermaritzburg

The AfrECC Foundation

The AfrECC Foundation, established in 2024, is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt public non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the African Esophageal Cancer Consortium (AfrECC). Its mission includes developing a strategic plan, creating a sustainability model, maintaining an ongoing dialogue with the AfrECC Steering Committee, and supporting AfrECC activities. One of its goals is to raise funds to complement resources obtained through academic grants and equipment donations.

The AfrECC Foundation hosted a reception at Digestive Disease Week in Washington, DC, in May 2024, to discuss its mission. Attendees included Board members, American and international guests, and leading experts in esophageal cancer, including physicians, scientists, business leaders, and advocates for AfrECC.

Past and Ongoing Work

AfrECC Clinical Studies

  • An endoscopic capacity survey found major needs in equipment and trained staff.
  • An endoscopic screening study showed prevalent dysplasia, a curable precursor of ESCC.
  • Another study showed that encapsulated sponges are acceptable for collecting esophageal cells for cheaper non-endoscopic screening.
  • Multicenter quality of life and survival studies are on-going.
  • We are increasing access to palliation using self-expanding metal stents through an AfrECC Stent Access Initiative which is focused upon training endoscopy teams and facilitating access to subsidized stents. This work is supported by Boston Scientific Corporation which has donated over 1500 stents.

Link to AfrECC publications

AfrECC Etiological Studies

In the past 10 years, we have completed 7 case-control studies of ESCC in 4 countries, including 2400 patients and 2400 controls.
‍
The risk factors found include:

  • Indoor air pollution
  • Drinking hot beverages
  • Poor oral health
  • Tobacco and alcohol

Wehave also collected genomic material on 3000 cases and controls which is nowbeing evaluated in a consortium-wide genomewide association study (GWAS).

Link to AfrECC publications

Current Needs

Affordable endoscopic Equipment and Repairs

Support for attendance at AfrECC training programs and meetings

Support for fieldwork and analytical collaborative research

Every Contribution Counts!

Your support can make a crucial difference in our mission. Every contribution of yours helps save lives.

Donate Now

Stories of Hope

A Kenyan woman who was diagnosed with ESCC at age 46. She had surgery in 1998 and has been cancer free since that time and is doing well at age 72.

This patient was 25 years old and pregnant, when she was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Dr Russ White performed curative surgery while she was pregnant and his colleagues in Obstetrics delivered her baby at term. Since that time she has had 4 other healthy babies.

Before: This man was seen at age 22 unable to swallow his own saliva and was seriously malnourished as is seen in the images. He had no metastatic disease but initially could not undergo surgery because of his nutritional status. An esophageal stent was placed to allow him to swallow and gain weight.

After: He is shown with Dr Russ White, Chief Surgeon, Tenwek Hospital in Kenya after his operation which successfully removed all the esophageal cancer.

Prior to placement of esophageal stent neither of these patients could swallow their own saliva. Because they presented at such a late stage, neither were candidates for curative therapy. However, stent placement would dramatically improve the quality of their lives, provide some dignity, and allow them to participate in social situations with friends and relatives.

Our Collaborations

Has been the most significant supporter of AfrECC, providing equipment, guidance, and support for training courses

Has provided support for legal services

Has developed the AfrECC Website

FAQs