Last week, I received a call from a woman with a vaguely European accent. She was calling on behalf of a friend of hers, a cancer patient living under deplorable housing conditions. Though she had Medicare to cover her immediate health needs, she still needed help getting in and out of her basement apartment and possible legal assistance to deal with the mice and other infestations within the apartment.
As the girl that answers the phone at a cancer research foundation, I am expected by most people like her (who likely found us through a desperate attempt to find help through 4-1-1) to know how to direct her to where she can get help — but most of the time, I cannot. For fairly pragmatic strategic reasons, our foundation has very little to do with individual patients’ care but instead focuses on leveraging our resources by investing in high-impact cancer research. I’m fully behind my organization’s mission. I believe in the importance of investing in youth and innovation, and know that this is what the foundation structure is best at. So, I get why we leave patient care to the hospitals and insurance companies.
And yet — even if this is the work that I am currently doing and fund-raising for, it is the patient advocacy work that is the guiding compass of my commitment to the healthcare field. Continue reading
