2022 Fund Recipients Chime In!

NORTHWESTERN MEDICINE

Northwestern Medicine is grateful for the support of Gavers Community Cancer Foundation which helps bring expert, compassionate cancer care to patients close to home. Donor support has helped patients battling cancer receive complimentary wigs, rides to and from appointments, daily-living pantry and toiletry items— delivered directly to patients, as well as post-surgical camisoles and educational materials. Philanthropy has also advanced imaging technology through the purchase of an MRI breast coil, a signal receiver that works with the MRI to create high-quality diagnostic images.

Thanks to your support, Northwestern Medicine continues to accelerate diagnosis and treatment options for patients with cancer. We look forward to continuing our work with you to bring hope and healing to people impacted by a cancer diagnosis.

RUSH

The Gavers Community Cancer Foundation, through its partnership with the Brian Piccolo Cancer Research Fund, provides essential funding for breast cancer clinicians and laboratory scientists at Rush University Medical Center, or Rush, to tackle the tough questions about cancer — how it grows, how to stop its spread and how to help patients live full lives.

For the past two decades, the Gavers Community Cancer Foundation’s commitment to pursuing this lifesaving research has not faltered. When you give to the Gavers Foundation, 100% of the proceeds go directly to cancer research, patient care and awareness programs.

Gavers has supported a wide range of research initiatives at Rush, including –

• Clinicians and laboratory scientists at Rush continue to seek highly effective therapies, surgical techniques, personalized approaches and biomarkers to predict disease before it manifests. Thanks to your ongoing support, researcher Andrew Zloza, MD, PhD, is investigating how to treat some forms of breast cancer with an already easily accessible weapon — the FDA-approved flu shot.
• Rush researchers Mia Levy, MD, PhD and Lisa Stempel, MD launched the Personalized Breast Cancer Risk Screening Project with a goal of creating a learning healthcare system model to develop and implement guidelines, analyze their impact, and refine them to continuously improve patient care. With the support of the Gavers Community Cancer Foundation, the project has gone through this cyclical pattern multiple times, allowing the project team to understand the nuances involved in breast cancer screening and downstream care.

FAMILY HEALTH PARTNERSHIP CLINIC

Everyone talks about how important early detection is.  What if you can’t afford medical care?  More than 20,000 people in McHenry County do not have health insurance.  Without insurance, cancers are detected at a much later – and much more serious – stage.  In fact, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute found that in a study of men with testicular cancer, uninsured men had a 26% higher chance of having it diagnosed as metastatic than men with insurance.    Uninsured patients with colon cancer had a 50-60% higher mortality than those with insurance.

Because access to care can literally save saves, Gavers Community Cancer Foundation partnered with Family Health Partnership Clinic in Crystal Lake to ensure that everyone had access to early detection, regardless of their insurance status.  Together, this partnership touches over 500 people each year and provides tests such as PSAs, skin cancer screening, colonoscopies, and biopsies.    Many of these have led to early treatment, which can be accomplished in the clinic rather than the hospital, saving money and resources for our entire community.   Gavers is proud to ensure that all of our neighbors have access to care.

LURIE CHILDREN’S OF CHICAGO

Over the course of the last five years Gavers Community Cancer Foundation has contributed to the ongoing study of pediatric brain tumors, specifically (Diffuse Intrinsic Pontein Glioma) DIPG at Lurie Children’s in Chicago. While other childhood cancer survival rates have improved tremendously, that is not the case with most brain tumors. The funds have been used to identify effective treatments for children with brain tumors, particularly those with DIPG. The laboratory and researchers have used genetic mouse modeling tools to study the tumor. There were three major aims focused on and they were to develop improved DIPG mouse models, to study the mechanism of novel oncogenes implicated in DIPG pathogenesis and to evaluate novel therapeutics. DIPG continues to have a dismal prognosis of 8-11 months. Researchers believe that the only way to cure this disease is by sharing information and working together across many institutions. They also believe that a cure for DIPG would have wide ranging implications for many other brain tumors.

TESTICULAR CANCER FOUNDATION

The Partnership with GCCF has been vital to our mission of providing education, awareness and support for the Testicular Cancer community.  Through their generosity, GCCF has enabled over 50 testicular cancer patients/survivors to attend our annual TCF SUMMIT conference in the last few years via Travel Scholarships.  In addition, the funds donated have assisted in our shower card program, which provides shower cards to individuals, schools, fraternity’s, church groups and more with the goal of ensuring every man know the warning signs of testicular cancer, and the importance of a self-exam.  A big thank you to everyone at GCCF, it is through partnerships with like-minded organizations that we can move the needle in the cancer community!