Understanding Comprehensive, Whole-Person Supportive Cancer Care 

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.