Donna Fielding Cancer Wellness Institute

Fulfilling Roper St. Francis Healthcare’s mission of healing all people with compassion, faith and excellence includes making it easier for patients, regardless of their ability to pay, to find and get cancer care as early as possible. Through your investment, you will provide:

• Cancer screenings to detect and prevent cancer. Approximately 45% of cancer deaths in the U.S. are attributed to potentially modifiable risk factors and cancer screening tests (American Cancer Society). For our neighbors who are under- or uninsured, access to cancer screenings is limited. Thanks to your generous support, we can plan for hundreds of free skin, breast, lung, bladder, prostate and colorectal screenings each year for everyone in our community.
• Patient assistance funding to help keep people stable during a time when the costs of innovation in care can create a heavy financial burden. With your help, patients won’t have to decide between paying for food or continuing treatment. You can help restore dignity by funding transportation, mortgage or rent, wigs, and other necessities so patients can stay focused on their treatment plan.
• Equitable access to care and screening, which will be a large component of our new community health unit for individuals living in targeted South Carolina counties. In today’s fight, the most progressive and forward-thinking leaders are moving past traditional brick and mortar. Technology allows us to be on the road.Your support will help us get into our communities and expand our mobile screening programs. And you’ll provide funding for healthcare education and outreach, along with preventative healthcare services such as primary care, cancer screening (breast, cervical, and skin), occupational health/wellness and mobile cancer screening programs, including mammography.

Your support can help provide the funding necessary to continually assess, expand and build the bricks-and-mortar cancer care facilities in our communities where care is needed. And you’ll help offer convenient access to life-saving care so patients and their families don’t have to worry about where or how to find treatment. That allows them to focus completely on what’s most important — beating cancer. The Donna Fielding Cancer Wellness Institute has patient navigators for all six disease-sites at all four RSFH locations and ensures that patients’ holistic needs are met during their cancer journey, including the following services:

• Pro Bono Legal Clinic in collaboration with the Charleston School of Law
• Increased health literacy and language appropriate education materials for community
• Music and massage therapy services offered
• Dedicated exercise Cancer Rehab program
• Roper St. Francis Foundation supported smoking cessation program
• Onsite Healing Boutique providing certified mastectomy-fitter and aesthetician
• Pastoral Care support
• Dedicated Advanced Practice Survivorship Program Coordinator
• Registered Dietitians providing nutritional support and education for all cancer patients
• Dedicated Oncology Support Assistant, serving as liaison with volunteer program, in addition to supporting the Oncology Service Line team

Your generosity will provide more help for more patients who not only face long cancer treatments but severe anxiety and financial strain.

Now more than ever, progress in cancer treatments is accelerating, offering more hope and more precious time with loved ones. With your philanthropic support, you can fund:

• Immunotherapy to transform patient outcomes. Research is proving that the more personalized and targeted the cancer therapy, the more effective the treatment can be — and often with fewer side effects.
• A High-Risk Clinic for Oncology which is a vital part of our personalized approach — not just in treatment but in the prevention and identification of risk. There are many decisions to make on any cancer journey, and that can even start before cancer develops. Your generosity provides access to advanced clinical trials, genetic counseling and nurse navigators, giving families the education and resources to develop a program of support customized for them — no matter where they are in their journey.
• Clinical trials to identify new treatments and new hope. Our ability to have a robust clinical trial program here at RSFH is entirely dependent on the funding we receive from generous supporters like you. The average trial only needs $6,000-$10,000 to get off the ground — a small start-up cost to fund potentially life-saving breakthroughs that not only improve care but offer the most options for care as well.

Advanced treatment at Roper St. Francis is about much more than targeting cancer cells. We take a holistic approach that makes the cancer journey a compassionate one — caring for the whole patient and their family. With your gift, you will help us invest in:

• Wellness Navigation and Social Support to care for the underserved, connecting patients to partner resources in the community. Our licensed clinical social workers serve nearly 300 patients each year, providing in-depth personalized psychosocial treatment and counseling addressing barriers to treatment, financial needs, and emotional distress. As the need for social support grows,your generosity can add a second social worker who will care for more patients.
• Survivorship Clinic for Oncology to help cancer survivors who still face significant hardships. Living beyond cancer should mean thriving — but often with continued emotional distress, physical challenges, and psychological trauma, not to mention mounting bills that can upend families from moving forward.Your gift today can help cancer survivors continue to fight by funding nurse navigators who coordinate families through continued after-care; dedicated mental health professionals to form a treatment path and strategies for coping; ability to access the Donna Fielding Cancer Wellness Institute and its therapeutic services; and alternative therapies, such as acupuncture and complementary care.