Each year, more than 33,000 South Carolinians are diagnosed with cancer. Nearly 1 out of 3 of them — mothers, grandfathers, neighbors, and loved ones — don’t survive.
And while a diagnosis can be scary, Roper St. Francis is advancing cancer care and illuminating hope for patients and families in the Lowcountry more than ever through our Donna Fielding Cancer Wellness Institute.
That’s why we have set an ambitious goal for our Campaign for Cancer Care, to drive advances in the detection and treatment of cancer in the four key areas below:
- Removing Barriers to Care
- Excellence in Patient Experience and Access to Care
- Innovation and Excellence in Treatment
- Caring for the Mind, Body and Spirit
To learn more about each area of focus expand the accordions below.
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:
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.
You Can Illuminate Hope
Exceptional care requires an exceptional commitment. Our caregivers can illuminate hope for even more patients fighting cancer through generous support from community members like you.
Please, make an investment in cancer care here at home with a gift to the Roper St. Francis Foundation today and illuminate hope for everyone battling cancer in the Lowcountry.
Donna Fielding Wellness Institute By The Numbers