September 30, 2024 – marked an important step forward in making whole-person, supportive cancer care the new national standard in our country—for all people living with cancer and their caregivers, no matter where they live or receive care. 

Organizations and leaders across the country and across sectors, including cancer care providers, patient advocacy groups, policy experts, employers, pharmaceutical companies, insurers, and other industry leaders, have united to launch a new national coalition: the Together for Supportive Cancer Care Coalition. 

The Sheri and Les Biller Family Foundation is grateful to these organizations for coming together. As both a member and convener of this new national coalition, we are committed to working with our Together for Supportive Cancer Care partners to drive equitable systems change. We look forward to learning from and collaborating with the incredible group of experts who make up this coalition. 

As many of you know, Sheri and Les Biller have a long-standing commitment to ensuring that cancer patients and their families receive supportive care. 

As Sheri Biller says, “Equitable access to supportive care must be viewed as a human right for all people. Every person, no matter their background, geography, or where they receive treatment for their illness, should have access to supportive care that provides emotional, physical, spiritual, and social support.” 

After establishing a close relationship with City of Hope, a renowned national cancer institute, Sheri and Les founded the Biller Patient and Family Resource Center. The center was a pioneering initiative designed to address the multifaceted needs of cancer patients, providing resources to strengthen and empower patients and caregivers before, during and after treatment.  

After years of witnessing the positive impact of supportive care, and yet how few people receive it, we set out to see what we could do.  We looked at the growing body of evidence that demonstrates how supportive cancer care improves treatment outcomes and quality of life while providing higher-value care and lowering healthcare costs. We talked to organizations who have been working in this area. We surveyed almost 10,000 patients, caregivers and providers.  And as a result, we took the bold step of bringing together a diverse set of leaders to consider working collaboratively to make supportive cancer care a national standard. 

In March of 2024, we convened the inaugural Together for Supportive Cancer Care Summit in Washington, D.C. We brought together public policy experts, cancer care providers, patient advocacy groups, employers, insurers, and pharmaceutical companies to address the urgent need for early and equitable access to supportive care across the cancer care continuum. We were inspired by the cross-sector collaboration and discussions and excited by everyone’s interest in continuing to work together. 

The Together for Supportive Cancer Care coalition, will amplify current efforts, share best practices, and identify new solutions to make supportive cancer care the national standard. We look forward to learning from and supporting the experts within the coalition as it drives meaningful change in cancer care. The coalition includes over 40 organizations who are committed to making supportive care an integral part of cancer treatment by addressing the clinical, emotional, and practical needs of patients and their caregivers. 

“Sheri has always had the vision to help support cancer patients by giving them, their family, and their caregivers the support they need, so the patient can focus on their clinical care and get well. We know that when people receive wrap-around supportive care, their quality of life, medical outcomes, and cost of care improve, “says Les Biller. 

By uniting cross-sector voices and expertise, the coalition is uniquely positioned to transform the cancer care landscape and ensure that patients, caregivers, and healthcare systems benefit from a whole-person approach to treatment. The coalition will work collaboratively across three focus areas: policy, research, and employer support, with specific goals to: 

• Advocate for state and federal policies that expand access to supportive cancer care. 

• Promote new and existing research demonstrating the positive impact of supportive care on outcomes, quality of life, and healthcare costs. 

• Engage employers as champions for expanding equitable access to supportive cancer care. 

We look forward to being part of the coalition and continuing to champion its members and our collective efforts to expand access to supportive care for all cancer patients, their caregivers, and their families. You can read more at the Together for Supportive Cancer Care website and read our full consensus paper here.

Supportive care is a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to care for people affected by serious illness, like cancer. It ensures that people with cancer and their caregivers’ needs are met from the beginning and at every step of their cancer journey in an individually tailored manner—including needs related to clinical, physical, and emotional health, as well as economic and environmental drivers of health. It is similar to palliative care, which is described as layered support for patients and caregivers. However, supportive care is care provided from the beginning of any cancer diagnosis. 

Supportive care includes:  

• Relieving symptoms and side effects related to the disease or treatment, such as pain management and nutritional support;  
• Supporting the emotional, psychological, and mental health of a person during treatment and survivorship, such as counseling;  
• Addressing environmental and economic drivers that prevent a person from accessing care, adhering to treatment, and thriving during treatment and survivorship, such as transportation access and safe housing; 
• Fostering and strengthening relationships that provide community support, such as community resources and support networks; 
• Improving understanding of care options and empowering personalized decision making related to quality of life, such as educational resources; and, 
• Helping those who wish to better understand how their experience fits within their spiritual and cultural beliefs, such as faith-based support. 

The Benefits of Supportive Cancer Care

Access to supportive care programs has a direct and positive impact on patients’ treatment outcomes and quality of life, while providing higher-value care, and lowering long-term costs for health care providers and payers. 

Patients with early and consistent access to supportive care report feeling more in control of their care and that their wishes are better communicated and understood by their loved ones and clinical team. Compared to patients who don’t receive early supportive care intervention, patients receiving supportive care experience shorter stays in hospital and fewer ICU admissions. When patients receive supportive care, disease-free survival rates are higher, especially for blood cancers.  

Supportive care programs also provide a tangible reduction in health care costs for providers. This is driven by the shorter length of stays in hospitals and in ICUs. That means, for policymakers, with supportive care, investments that lower costs are made up front and reduce costs over the treatment period. 

How We Advance Supportive Cancer Care Programs

Despite their proven benefits, broad, integrated supportive care programs are not widely available at hospitals around the country for people facing cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. We are committed to advancing the model of supportive care and to expanding access to it across the country. Our goal is for every patient in America to have access to supportive care, no matter where they receive care, and we will accomplish that by working to build partnerships to educate, communicate, and advocate for supportive care. That’s why we work with partners to expand access and to make supportive care the national standard of care in the United States. 

Partnership with City of Hope

Our deepest partnership is with City of Hope, a world-renowned research hospital offering a uniquely holistic and multidisciplinary clinical approach to supportive care medicine. It is one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States and a national leader in providing cancer patients with best-in-class, integrated supportive care programs. The Foundation has invested to create the Sheri and Les Biller Patient and Family Resource Center at the Duarte and Orange County campuses. Opened in 2008, the Biller Resource Center integrates all patient support services under one umbrella and provides patients and their families a warm and welcoming private space to consult with medical staff and to explore the many resources offered to strengthen and empower patients and caregivers before, during, and after treatment. To learn more about the City of Hope and the City of Hope’s Sheri and Les Biller Patient and Family Resource Center, please click here to visit the City of Hope website and click here to explore the Center on Facebook. 

The Supportive Care Training Program has been presented to 36 institutions across 25 cities in six states and two countries.

In May 2022, we announced that we are deepening our partnership with City of Hope to bring supportive care to every cancer patient and creating more equitable access to integrated cancer care. We provided a $10 million gift to expand access to supportive care for patients across its cancer care system, and to advocate for making supportive care the national standard practice for cancer care in the United States. You can read more about City of Hope’s supportive care model and our partnership here.

National Research on Barriers to Supportive Care & Needs for Expanded Access 

In February 2023, we initiated research to explore the barriers to supportive cancer care and better understand the needs that exist for expanded patient access. To date, we have conducted online surveys among more than 7,000 patients with cancer or survivors of cancer. We also surveyed more than 750 healthcare practitioners who had recently treated patients with cancer, including physicians, nurses, and physician assistants. 

Our research gave us a clear mandate: nearly all healthcare practitioners (95%) and patients (95%) alike believe that supportive cancer care is important. Our research also highlighted the challenge: patients face significant barriers that impede access to supportive cancer care. Only three in ten health care practitioners say cancer patients have equitable access to supportive cancer care. 

Based on this research, our foundation’s 15 years championing supportive care programs, and the invaluable research and analysis over decades by experts and practitioners in supportive and palliative care , we know that there is a need to prioritize systems change for integrating supportive cancer care services into healthcare organizations. We also know we need policy changes that incentivize delivery and payment for supportive cancer care services in clinical care settings. 

National Advocacy for “Supportive Care Everywhere” 

Our goal is for every patient in America to have access to supportive care, so we are working to build partnerships across the country to educate, communicate, and advocate for supportive care.  

In March 2024, in the nation’s capital, the Foundation convened the “Together for Supportive Cancer Care” Summit. The event brought together public policy experts, industry stakeholders including employers, insurance and pharmaceutical companies, cancer care providers, and cancer patient advocacy groups to develop a set of strategies that could make supportive care the national standard for cancer and other-threatening diseases. In the coming weeks, we look forward to sharing a consensus paper from the Summit and next steps for continuing this kind of cross-sector collaboration and a potential roadmap for advocacy and action.