Together for Supportive Cancer Care Coalition Formed to Transform Cancer Care Nationwide
Just over a year ago, a national coalition of over 40 organizations was formed to expand early, equitable access to whole-person, supportive care as a nationwide standard for treating cancer. The coalition’s focus areas include advocating for policy changes, raising awareness about the positive impact of supportive cancer care, and engaging employers as advocates for expanding early and equitable access to supportive care for all people with cancer.
Together for Supportive Cancer Care was convened by The Sheri and Les Biller Family Foundation and comprises patient advocacy groups, cancer care providers, policy experts, pharmaceutical companies, employers, and insurers. Coalition members work together to ensure that the unique needs of people with cancer and their caregivers are met at every step of their cancer journey, integrating clinical care with physical, emotional, spiritual, economic, and community support.
In the announcement of its formation, the coalition noted that “a growing body of evidence shows that supportive cancer care improves patient treatment outcomes and quality of life, while providing higher-value care and lowering long-term health costs. However, the benefits of supportive care are not currently accessible to everyone with cancer.”
Cancer Support Community (CSC) is one of the coalition’s members. It is dedicated to uplifting and strengthening people impacted by cancer by providing support, fostering compassionate communities, and breaking down barriers to care. CSC’s CEO, Sally Werner, RN, BSN, MSHA, explained that the missions of Together for Supportive Cancer Care and CSC align well, especially in their combined focus on early psychosocial intervention for patients and their families.
Sally Werner
“We always look for opportunities to collaborate with others focused on supportive cancer care, especially psychosocial cancer care,” she said, noting that many coalition members are small or mid-sized non-profit organizations that can struggle to ‘go it alone’ and thrive when additional voices are brought to the table. “We were drawn to the coalition because of their cross-cutting membership across the continuum and spectrum of care, and the coalition was attracted to CSC’s service delivery and network of 200+ locations.”
Six Essential Elements of Supportive Cancer Care
Together for Supportive Cancer Care divides supportive care into six essential areas, addressing the comprehensive needs of patients and caregivers and covering every aspect of physical, emotional, and social well-being:
- Physical: Relieving symptoms and side effects related to the disease or treatment, through strategies such as pain management and nutritional support.
- Psychological/Emotional: Supporting the emotional, psychological, and mental health of a person during treatment and survivorship, through efforts such as counseling.
- Environmental & Economic Health: Addressing environmental and economic drivers that prevent a person from accessing care, adhering to treatment, and thriving during treatment and survivorship, focusing on issues like transportation access and safe housing.
- Community Health: Fostering and strengthening relationships that provide community support, with initiatives such as community resources and support networks.
- Educational Health: Improving the understanding of care options and empowering personalized decision-making related to quality of life, by developing educational resources.
- Spiritual Health: Helping those who wish to better understand how their experience fits within their spiritual and cultural beliefs, through faith-based support.
“There’s quite a lot of overlap among these six essential areas,” Werner said. “And one could certainly argue that all six areas affect a patient’s emotional health.”
As an example, she pointed to Economic Health, noting that not having health insurance or being underinsured can negatively impact a patient’s psychological well-being.
“Providers and payers haven’t always appreciated the value of social and emotional support,” Werner said. “But when you couple the coalition’s research from the perspective of providers, payers, and employers, with CSC’s research on the patient and caregiver cancer experience, the value of psychosocial support is clearly impactful. Today, for example, we know that stress, anxiety, and higher rates of suicidality directly impact health outcomes and the cost of care.”
Helping Patients Navigate the Mental Health Care Landscape
Werner said she is pleased to see that patient navigation, including psychosocial care, is now acknowledged as critical to the success of cancer treatment, pointing to recent shifts in Medicare reimbursement for principal illness navigation and community health integration. However, she remains concerned about potential changes to insurance programs and accountable care programs, where future cuts may impact existing social work and distress screening programs.
“If the infrastructure doesn’t exist to ensure that a patient is asked about their mental health needs, then they don’t get a referral,” she explained. “Even with a referral to a mental health specialist, they may face access problems including out-of-pocket costs for treatments, transportation disparities, and difficulty getting time off work. In the longer term, if fewer people have insurance, providers and health systems will struggle more to provide these services.”
CSC, she said, helps fill these gaps. For 43 years, it has provided social and emotional support free of charge and maintains a referral network through the Together for Supportive Cancer Care coalition and other collaborations.
One example of a collaboration that has resulted from CSC’s membership in the coalition is with One Village, a personalized navigation and coaching platform, which CSC has partnered with to deliver expert-led cancer education seminars to the workplace.
CSC also is filling the cancer support gap in services geared to underserved populations, including young adults.
“Cancer has traditionally been a disease that affects the 65+ community,” Werner said. “While incidences of cancer have been decreasing in general, in 8 of the 13 areas seeing increased incidence rates, young adults are driving that increase.”
CSC is responding to this trend by shifting some of their outreach efforts to generationally authentic content that will appeal to a younger demographic, using short, snackable social media and video posts to reach young adults early and often.
Caregivers are another underserved group for supportive care – Werner called 2025 the “Year of the Caregiver” at CSC.
“We are paying more attention to what it means to be a caregiver – the time caregivers need to spend away from work and activities and the impact caregiving has on their own physical and mental health,” Werner said.
CSC supports caregivers in several ways, including through its Cancer Support Helpline. Helpline navigation experts are available to help caregivers determine how to best schedule their time-off requests, plan for out-of-pocket expenses, and make other caregiving decisions. CSC also hosts Policy Power Hour webinars in which patients and caregivers can ask questions and get additional support. Some CSC network locations host watch parties for the webinars where patients and caregivers can gather in person to keep the conversation going and share additional resources.
“In today’s changing political and health care landscape, patients and caregivers have many questions and significant stress and anxiety about the future of cancer research and cancer care,” Werner said. “We want everyone to know that CSC remains committed to being there for them through our direct services and through new collaborations like Together for Supportive Cancer Care.”
