THIS Company Is Helping 40,000 Families Overcome Cancer’s Costs!

[0:00]  the thing that's scary to me is when we have conversations like this you have to recognize how close everybody is to that threshold of being in real serious trouble I want to say it's like 80% of us households struggle financially AKA being paycheck to paycheck when you add a diagnosis like cancer on top of that debilitating and the biggest challenges we face in society today aren't you know some of these big challenges that we talk about with like Wars and pandemics but isolation and loneliness especially as a family goes through these challenges who do they reach out to who do they lean on when they're by themselves and they have to sell their Furniture in order to put enough jelly on a piece of bread to feed their children it sounds like an incredibly scary time for so many people and then you insert yourself right into it to be that Community to help people in these times of need that's right there's so

[0:50]  much fear and shame in talking about your finances and when cancer strikes a lot of people feel shame that they even have cancer so some people just naturally Retreat um and so that we've got to wipe through the fear Wipe Out the fear in the shame and let people know that this is cancer you did nothing wrong you pulled the cancer card it's happened to me it happens to there'll be 2 million new cancer diagnoses this year and one out of three of those cannot afford their basic needs housing food Transportation utilities so until we make people comfortable talking about talking about finances talking about cancer we're still just going to meet families when they're in crisis when

[1:38]  it's too late when there's so much that can be done about it all right guys welcome back to a brand new episode of the heart and hustle podcast I'm incredibly excited because I have an amazing leader of an amazing organization sitting across this digital table with me now today I'm sitting across the from the CEO of family reach Carla welcome to the show I'm so excited for you to be here it is so good to be here thank you for your passion thank you for opening up so many doors and minds and hearts it's an honor to be here absolutely well you know we're going to talk about a couple things today we're going to talk about

[2:24]  some of the misconceptions and the financial strain that families who have an individual or are dealing with a cancer diagnosis face we're going to talk about navigating resources we're going to talk about destigmatizing financial conversations when people are suffering from cancer we're going to talk about your personal Journey as well but to start us off here I thought it was really important to talk about a promise that you made to a friend now you made a promise to a friend that changed the trajectory of your life can you tell us what that promise was and what happened after uh a dear friend of mine from college I went to Syracuse University he played played football for Syracuse and then he went into the NFL um his name was Pat Kelly this guy was larger than life um he is one of these people that just sucked you in and really

[3:14]  just lived large um and he got brain cancer uh shortly after his son was born son who shared his name was three years old when he was diagnosed with brain cancer he was treated at Memorial slone ketering he would during his treatment just because of who he is he would go down to the Pediatric floors he'd bring Jets players he played for the Jets um really just to cheer these kids up and um while he was down there he was listening to parents and he was like wait a second nobody's talking about cancer here they're talking about the fact that obviously if you're there by your child's side you're not working and income is dramatically cut and he was hearing people talk about the fact that they're finally getting released from the hospital but there's no heat and what are they going to do and then one

[4:02]  little girl was crying because she hadn't seen her dad in a month and the mom was like parking is $45 we can't both come here every day so he just kept calling me every time he'd visit these kids and he'd say all right there's this whole other side of cancer that nobody is talking about that we need to expose so about two weeks before he passed away a bunch of us went down to just say goodbye celebrate his life and he could only whisper at this point he was so weak but I was sitting next to him holding his hand he squeezed my hand which means look at me looked at him and he said look me in the eye and promised me you're going to fix this and I knew exactly what he was talking about because he had made so many phone calls and I said I promise I will Ken and I had no idea what it was I knew you know

[4:50]  he's talking about basic needs for cancer patients I said I promised cuz I felt that stare in my soul but I had no idea what I was promising it's so heavy to think about how your world changes when you're dealing with a family member or a personal diagnosis of cancer naturally you go to the place of oh my goodness am I going to be able to survive this but then the real life implications come behind that of oh my goodness how are we going to be able to afford this what sacrifices are we going to have to make to make sure that you're okay and so often that means choosing between rent or choosing between food or choosing between education and so many people make these sacrifices in the dark and I feel like even having this conversation is kind of like Illuminating the space more so to recognize that these are huge challenges that people face today it's math you

[5:38]  have cancer or a loved one has cancer because you said at the top cancer affects the whole family so when we talk about cancer it is very likely that you have the person with cancer but you have many other people affected immediately affected you can't work or job job your your um job is interrupted or completely stopped and so is your income but the bills keep coming the monthly bills that you and I have they keep coming and for a cancer patient they actually are they grow because of the cost of care and because of all of the out of-pocket expenses required to access care and to stay adherent to care so it's literally math and it doesn't add up when you left the bedside of Pat and he says you have to figure this out what was the journey

[6:26]  like in you kind of digging into I would say the mud and recognizing the challenges that people were going through I'm sure you found a lot of I would say eye openening experiences during that time with people being challenged financially and the math just not adding up yeah well you know at that point I had my own company I had an event planning fundraising company and I I thought I had my path I thought I knew what I was doing um and I to be totally honest with you had his picture on my desk and for about a year I turned that picture around cuz I was like stop look looking at me I don't know what to do I have two young children I am running this company I just don't know what to do and then I hit a point where I'm like okay I've got to figure this out and one of my clients at the time I so I decided I was going to shut the business down um

[7:15]  and I was going to dedicate myself talk to my husband I said all right I'm taking I'm banging a UI here I cannot live with myself I have to figure this out so met with one of my clients to say I'm going to close shop I have to do this and it happened to be the founder of family reach who lost his sister she was treated at Memorial slone ketering she was 27 years old she had a pediatric cancer Ying saroma she saw the same thing Pat did and on her deathbed promised made her family promise that they would address basic needs for cancer patients so this family and another family the the Colangelo and the Morelos had gotten together 12 years before this moment and and they were helping cancer patients with basic needs

[8:02]  in the two hospitals where their children were treated Memorial SL kering in New York Presbyterian so when I made this big announcement to Rick Mel he just said oh my gosh that is my family's Foundation here's how we do it we talk to social workers in the hospital we say this money they raised money they said this money is not for the hospital this money is for the social workers to distribute directly to families with basic needs so when he said that I was like of course you have a model that I can just scale and that's how it started it was sitting there the whole time do you believe in fate Carla if oh heck yes and if I didn't before that moment I did at that moment so what is

[8:52]  the experience like when you know we're saying okay I'm going to have to jump this Chasm I'm going to shut down my current business I'm going to start pursuing this but yet the last client who you speak to says I have a vehicle for you to do this what are the feelings that are going through your body what are the realizations of the work that it's going to take to kind of transfer into this space what were those early days like for you yeah I knew I had a lot to learn I I didn't nobody sets out to do this work I I just I didn't understand it it didn't make sense the wealthiest country in the world are these people that don't have health insurance are these PE like what what is it so I did spend the first two years literally talking talking to the social workers in the hospitals sit allow they said here here's families that are struggling literally sitting in their hospital room what is going on you're here how are you paying the bills what

[9:40]  you know so going to their homes literally sitting in their kitchen and I remember one family I walked in and her daughter had cancer and she and her her daughter and her son were sitting at the table they had a piece of bread with a little bit of jelly on it and this is what they were eating and she's like this is all I have this is it and opened the cabinets for me and they were empty and so I spent about 2 years in the healthcare system in patients homes in the hospital's room saying talk to me what is this like how did you get here and if you had a magic wand what what would that what could I do and I learned so much in that time and I and I wasn't prepared for it in that I left that

[10:28]  woman's house and I went to the grocery store to buy groceries for my family but now I have two carts and now I am filling up a grocery cart for her and I'm going back to her house to fill her cabinets before I come home to fill mine I'm on the phone with the social workers were referring patients to me and there was one moment where this woman had just sold her furniture to pay for her heat and I said do you need a couch you know and I could see my husband in the doorway behind me going really really you're giving away the couch and I so I was so in it and not prepared for the emotional toll that it took for me I'm a fixer I'm like what do you need let me do it let me do it quickly realized it was way too big for me to be addressing it in this manner and knew I needed to

[11:17]  surround myself with a team that could address it in a more sustainable way the thing that's scary to me is when we have conversations like this you have to recognize how close everybody is to that threshold of being in real serious trouble I want to say it's like 80% of us households struggle financially AKA being paycheck to paycheck when you add a diagnosis like cancer on top of that debilitating and the biggest challenges we face in society today aren't you know some of these big challenges that we talk about with like Wars and pandemics but isolation and loneliness especially as a family goes through these challenges who do they reach out to who do they lean on when they're by themselves and they have to sell their Furniture in order to put put enough jelly on a piece of bread to feed their children it sounds like an incredibly scary time for so many people

[12:05]  and then you insert yourself right into it to be that Community to help people in these times of need that's right there's so much fear and shame in talking about your finances and when cancer strikes a lot of people feel shame that they even have cancer so some people just naturally Retreat um and so that we've got to wipe through the fear Wipe Out the fear and the shame and let people know that this is cancer you did nothing wrong you pulled the cancer card it's happened to me it happens to there'll be two million new cancer diagnoses this year and one out of three of those cannot afford their basic needs housing food Transportation utilities so until we make people comfortable talking about

[12:54]  talking about finances talking about cancer we're still just going to meet am when they're in crisis when it's too late when there's so much that can be done about it so a big a big goal of mine is to make people comfortable talking about their finances and to know they did nothing wrong but I just want to say one more thing about the fear if you're a parent with cancer or if you have a child with cancer and you go to your social worker you're the hospital and you say I'm about to get evicted or I don't have food you literally your children could literally be removed from the home because you cannot afford basic needs so that fear I don't I want to just say that fear is real and I understand it but there is help and there are ways

[13:44]  we can help that was going to be my question why is family reach even necessary right if you can go to the hospital and you have a diagnosis and say hey I'm struggling here financially obviously there are other implications that I didn't really know about but Social Services coming in taking your children away things like that that sounds incredibly scary too yeah yeah it it adds it adds to the stigma and it adds to the fear and and I know a lot of people think and it's true the hospital is focused on your cancer um and cancer patients are are patients I had the opportunity to Shadow a pediatric oncologist she was a brain um pediatric oncologist in Florida at a fantastic hospital and she allowed me to

[14:32]  Shadow her for the day because I wanted to understand what is it like for the healthc care provider I know what it's like for the family what is it like on that other side so this woman was saying we're going to go talk to this little boy he's 7 years old he has Down syndrome he has brain cancer he has been fighting for two years he has had brain surgeries he's had radiation he's had chemotherapy the tumor is growing we are going into this little exam room to tell this family that the tumor is growing and we walked in to this room and this little boy is squirming on his dad's lap and the doctor is saying you know we've got to get this tumor out he needs to have surgery and the mother said I'm sorry he's so fussy we left the house at 4:00 this morning I hear that is a 5H hour drive for them but the doctor is like

[15:21]  I've got to cure this little boy and she said he needs another surgery the surgical team is waiting on the third floor you're going to leave here you going to go schedule your surgery and the dad says how long is this going to take we have two little girls that get off the school bus soon so they they're looking at their clock saying our little girls are about to be dumped on the side of the street we got to get home and then he also last asked when did she need the surgery cuz I'm all out of paid time off but the doctor says if he does not get the surgery he will not make it go to the third floor and when we left that hospital room I said to her with all due respect they're not going to the third floor they can't and they didn't how do you how do you how do you put yourself in an environment like this where these are people who are going through some of the

[16:07]  toughest decisions of their lives it's so emotionally charged how do you find yourself doing this work without absorbing all the emotional baggage and Trauma that comes along with this because this can't be easy for you no it's it's funny because I still get choked up when I think about it and and I will tell you every single myself and everyone on my team team have tissues on our desk and there are many a days where we are grabbing for those tissues um and I've had team members say my god when does this get easier I'm like when it does you got to go because that means you don't feel it anymore and it is hard to feel but you got to keep showing up and I do have hope and I do know that we can fix this um and I do feel like we are on the verge of change I've been

[16:56]  doing this for 17 years and preco when I would talk about Health Equity those words were not together in a sentence but when I would talk about what we see in the patient reality people are like I you know they didn't understand it co at least pulled back the curtain on what is Health Equity what is isolation what is job loss what is food insecurity what is housing insecurity what is a a fear of getting sick I mean that's all of that is cancer so when Co was hitting and we were hearing all of this I'm like oh my gosh this is what yes this is cancer so don't forget when we get to the other side of Co don't forget fear isolation housing insecurity food insecurity because that is what patients are still living with every day so hold on to that because we

[17:45]  can fix this but we do need everybody to have the courage to look at it so that they can help help with the solution part of my natural inquisitiveness goes to the fact of does it have to be this way because the cost of these surgeries are so expensive the insurance structure is not meant to be able to protect people when they're going through this it's either choose the surgery or don't choose the surgery and if you don't choose the surgery you know what's going to happen so what do we need to change just from like a ideological perspective of how the Health Care system works so we don't have families who are having to choose between my family or my living which is a really tough na like choice to have to navigate yeah yeah I mean the healthcare system is broken and I I I am so focused

[18:35]  on the patient reality and the patient Journey my North Star is when someone is diagnosed with cancer they get their medical treatment but they also get the financial treatment right right away you are going to know about the utility hardship programs you are going to know about food delivery programs you are going to know about SNAP benefits you are you we will get to a point where we can build in this safety net so that you can access care and adhere to treatment and have the best shot of beating this disease that everyone has the same chance of beating this disease so I don't know the answer on how to fix a broken Health Care System but I do know that Financial Health needs to be a

[19:23]  standard of care so that we can increase cancer survival rates this goes back to the whole person view of care right it's not just mental it's not just physical it's not just you know cardiovascular but it's also Financial there are so many different elements that impact somebody's livelihood but also longevity of life and happiness that we need to focus on and I wish that Healthcare Systems had the ability to respond in the way that we're talking about but it almost seems like the system in which they operate in doesn't give them the opportunity to spend the individualized time that it takes to educate somebody about these type of things it's basically all on the patient's experience were just the clinical aspect of trying to get these things done but that seems like a really backwards way to approach it yeah and I and I see them trying I mean I'm seeing Hospitals now a handful of hospitals put food banks in

[20:12]  the hospital that's phenomenal so a a patient can say I know we have a food bank here I'm food insecure they literally get a subscription for healthy foods that is a fantastic step in the right direction I have a lot of um hospitals say we do social determinance of Health screenings now I do think we can catch some people there too that say I'm having trouble or yes I live alone and I can't work so of course I'm not going to be able to pay my bills I think a lot of patients don't answer those honestly because of the fear and the shame um we have we partner with over 12200 hospitals across the country their oncology social workers have access to my team but more patients come to us through our website than through 1,200 Hospital hospitals because of that fear

[21:01]  they are more comfortable on their own trying to get this basic need met but I I am seeing some change I am seeing hos some hospitals sort of embrace this this fact because they're seeing patients 31% cut their meds in half another 32% don't even fill their prescriptions of course they're not going to survive cancer so I think they're starting to understand how basic needs and Health Equity are affecting their ability to treat somebody with cancer how do you guys create scale to be able to support 1200 plus hospitals do we have team members in these spaces are we talking about like a portal that team members can access what does the implementation process look like so they can take

[21:48]  advantage fully of family reach when they're at the patient interaction space so um I have a team of social workers and Navigators that are working with the hospitals and working with patients directly what we have done really we're really leaning into Health Equity there's a stat that the American Association of cancer research came out with that one out of three cancer deaths in this country could be prevented by removing socioeconomic barriers that is my North Star we can increase cancer survival rates by addressing basic needs and removing these Financial barriers so in addition to the hospital Partnerships we are also we've got this heat map um of the United States and

[22:37]  we're looking at diagnosis rates mortality rates poverty rates we're going into those areas to find Community Partners who in those communities are dealing with cancer patients in the community they have the trust they're in their neighborhood they have the conversations um freely and to say here's our here's our finan cial interventions Financial education resource navigation emergency financial assistance you disseminate these Financial Resources into your community so through Partnerships with hospitals Partnerships with Community Partners that those Community Partners become an extension of who we are so we're training the trainers um and then we have uh a subset of my team that is working with patients

[23:24]  that come to us directly But to answer your question on how we scale we we have tens of thousands of basic need resources across the country and we had hundreds of people waiting in a a a queue to talk to one of my Navigators and that was keeping me up at night so knowing we need to train more trainers so that they can do this work using all of our resources we built an online platform that patients caregivers can access by by going to family.org going to our website clicking on get help and they can download all of this information about how do I talk about my finances who do I talk to about how do I save money how what do I need to know

[24:13]  let's just normalize the conversation around finances you can also go to the navigation portal and enter your zip code and say I am housing insecure I am food insecure I need utilities and then all of the resources in your ENC Catman area pop up and they have all been vetted within the last week they are all viable they are open we are not sending you down a rabbit hole to waste your time what you see there is open you can see the hours they're open you can see the address there's a phone number if it's an application so that plat that navigation platform is incredible for patients that are more comfortable doing this on their own and they can see which emergency financial assistance funds we have open if you're trying to get to a clinical

[25:01]  trial we have a clinical trials access fund we have a pediatric fund we have an adult fund so this online portal this online platform is how we are is how we are scaling we launched it a few months ago we haven't told anybody about it I can see the backend analytics I can see all the activity there's over 82,000 searches on this site from cancer patients looking for basic needs and we haven't told anybody about it yet so this is how we are going to scale a really long answer but I love no a beautiful answer because we have to think about these things differently right and the reason why I asked what does the training the implementation process look like inside the hospital because I understand the Dynamics and

[25:48]  the pressure that's on the nursing staff and even the social workers inside of the hospital it is constantly moving to get to the next patient to do XYZ and so when I think about access on someone else's own terms we have to create a digital environment from my perspective that they can access 247 365 to do that self-navigation because you'd be surprised where people who are listening to this podcast about how many people do not feel comfortable talking about their personal situation especially finances to somebody in a clinical environment it just doesn't seem right there's stigma behind it there's fear there's judgment there's all these different type of feelings and to think about how we can just create a better sense of community around this conversation is incredibly important did you guys ever try anything else different before you guys went into the digital platform realm or why was it

[26:36]  hey we have to create this space that obviously has so much traction how did you guys come to that decision yeah we've tried we've tried so many we are innovators I mean we've been doing this for family reaches BR for 28 years I've been in this space for 17 years so I dare I say we try Pilot We pilot so many different things how do we reach patients how do we what do they need How We Do focus groups we partner with as I say Community Partners we just really want to learn and meet patients where they are with the program that they need so we have partnered with other nonprofits in the cancer space to say you do great work here but you don't do financial assistance let's partner so we Partnerships are um really important to meet the patients where they are um and

[27:26]  then just understanding Where is the patient comfortable and you know where where will are they willing to open up and then how do we make sure that our resources are there so I think what we've tried um new is these Community Partnerships Partnerships with nonprofit we've done fundraising is a massive challenge for us so we are giving away um emergency financial assistance that there's not enough money for us to address this need so we are giving away funds so fundraising storytelling awareness is a huge part of what I do all day long so that we can help another family that is in a waiting line right now we are

[28:16]  knowing there's not enough money to help with the basic needs um of all the cancer patients we are forming Partnerships with hotels with utility companies that have emergency funds so we can plug patients into these programs or through our Partnerships that don't cost us anything but there's empty hotel rooms I have patients that need to get to a clinical trial in New York it's very expensive to stay in New York so we partner with an airline we partner with a hotel we got you covered so I think you know the way we approach this is entrench oursel in the patient Journey what do they need how are we going to fill those gaps all boats rise how do we do this together but raising awareness for the problem

[29:04]  raising awareness for the patient reality is step one because people just don't know if you could go back 17 years to that version of Carla who was just starting on this journey right recognizing all the challenges that you faced between now and how we sit across the table from each other here what advice would you give to that younger version of yourself as they were going to navigate this next 17 years nobody has ever asked me that question one thing that I did that I'm one thing that I do well is surround myself with really smart compassionate people and I think I would so I'm really proud of the people that I have been able to get on board um and to open up what took me a

[29:54]  while I felt very protective of the families that we were helping one of the first families that I met was a single mother she was in her 20s she had a 4-year-old with leukemia who had just relapsed he was first diagnosed at 18 months she was living in a homeless shelter for 2 years with this little boy with cancer because she couldn't work he needed a bone marrow transplant the hospital said we've got a match but you cannot get you he can't get this bone marrow transplant if you're in a homeless shelter it's just not sanitary so I ended up getting her out of the shelter into an apartment near the hospital so he could get this bone marrow transplant I protected these families so fiercely that I cuz I knew how much courage it took to talk about what their situation was and it was this woman a

[30:42]  year after coming out of isolation her son is still with us today he's 19 years old she tapped me on the shoulder and said let me tell my story I don't want anybody to go through what I went through I would tell my younger self ask ask the families if they want to talk about it at tell give the families an opportunity to say this is what happened to me this is how I got help this is where we are today ask for help once I gave families that platform uh the message became so much more clear and so many more patients were willing to come forth and say I need help I wish I had done that sooner we have that Natural Instinct right to insulate the people who we care

[31:29]  about from any type of trouble or additional harm and it's a really tough battle to recognize that sometimes you have to step back so they can step into their own pain to be able to help you guys execute on the mission and share the mission and the vision that you guys have been able to articulate it empowered her and she said it that at she stood up at an event with a few hundred people and told her story knee shaking voice quivering stopping to cry but when she got off that stage she said I'm not the victim anymore now I'm going to lead the way for others dramatic change you've been doing this work for 17 plus years now how do you think about where you guys are going what Vision are you casting for the team so they can all buy into what the next 17 years of this

[32:17]  is going to look like what are you thinking about it's I I'm thinking about this ecosystem outside of healthcare I'm thinking about all the hospital Partnerships the airline Partnerships I'm thinking about um getting every single Cancer Care Center in this country to have access to my financial Resource Center I'm thinking about major donors who understand Health Equity and understand that there are people dying from cancer when there is a treatment when there is something that can be done about it um and I am thinking about making Financial Health a standard of care every hospital having access to this financial Resource Center me being able to fill my emergency Financial assistance funds every month um I think we've got it I just need to scale it

[33:05]  we've proven it works we just need to get people to talk about it we're there how how do you balance the one of the biggest things that I've had to come to realization is sometimes the impact that we're waiting for takes time and time often takes time but often I feel like I'm impatient because I want to get there quicker but I also recognize subconsciously if we just continue to March we will have the impact but how do you kind of deal with the feeling of being impatient because you know so many people need more help yeah Amen to that I my team says my God you work with such a sense of urgency and I do because I look at the queue I know I know these patients personally so uh yeah that sense of urgency will never go away for me what I often do um to my team is is

[33:57]  take a minute and to look around to see what we're doing 1,200 Hospital Partners helping 40,000 cancer patients a year built the financial Resource Center 880,000 plus people on the center getting help look at the wins celebrate the success that fuels us to keep going because what we're doing works the people we are reaching are staying on treatment getting to the other side of cancer coming back to us to say how do I pay this forward how can I help and that is what fuels us it's just a numbers I remember the day we celebrated we helped a 100 patient one year we thought that was the greatest thing ever we've helped a 100 patients now we're up to 40,000 so now of course

[34:47]  I'm like how do we get to 250,000 how I also know that I'll never be done I'm always going to want more we are playing the infinite game but it's so important for us to not find our our eles in the gap between where we are and where we're trying to get to but often the gain of how far we've come if you could talk to that version of you know Carla who said we just made Ser we just supported a 100 patients this year and she say waiting for the future because you're going to get 40,000 right that would be an amazing story to be able to talk to our previous versions of ourselves one of the uh traditions we have here car on the podcast is we kind of wrap things up is our previous guest wanted to ask you a blind question now their question was who who has had the greatest influence on your life Pat Kelly did you think that that simple conversation was going

[35:36]  to change the trajectory of your life in the way that it did not in a million years I still talk to him every day you asked you know do you believe in fate there are many a days where I'm like Pat I need this Pat I mean Pat Kelly he got me into the White House part of the cancer Moon shot working with Biden Obama working with you know it's it's uh ask for it believe in it know that you've got you you've got a Tailwind there's people looking out for us just ask for it well you know Carl I think it's easy for everybody to understand who's been tuning in watching and listening today why you are the definition of heart and hustle we can see the heart behind what you do and the hustle that you create every single day and the urgency in which you work to help people who need that voice of

[36:24]  support who often can't raise their own hand and so I just want say thank you so much for coming on the podcast seriously this has been an absolute blessing thanks for helping me tell the story I hope we reach people so that they can get help absolutely well guys that's a wrap we'll catch you in the next one