The nonprofit has an opportunity to tell the story of how the organization adapted to tremendous external changes in the last year.
At the American Cancer Society, we are laser-focused on improving the lives of all people facing cancer and their families, while working to reduce health disparities and increase equitable access to care. Over the past year, the American Cancer Society has worked to restore services and support for cancer patients and their families that were disrupted during the pandemic. For instance, safety concerns for our residents at the early stages of the pandemic forced the temporary closure of our 30+ Hope Lodge® communities. Over the past year we have safely reopened these homes away from home, bringing cancer patients and caregivers close to cancer care. The pandemic also disrupted routine cancer screenings for more than 9 million Americans. In reaction, we are spending significant time and resources improving awareness of the importance of cancer screening and educating the population on the life-saving importance of detecting cancer early. We partnered with health systems to conduct prevention, screening and vaccination programs. Despite lingering headwinds from the pandemic, this past year the American Cancer Society touched more than 45 million lives through our patient support programs and services. In more than 5,000 communities across the country, we educated patients about the more than 200 diseases we call cancer. As part of our discovery work, we committed to fund more than $400 million in cancer research grants across the country that are yielding new breakthroughs in cancer prevention, detection, treatments, and potential cures. To address disparities, our ACS CAN advocacy teams work to ensure that everyone has a fair chance to prevent, detect, treat, and survive cancer. With a new CEO onboarded in June 2021 bringing an exciting vision to end cancer as we know it, for everyone, there is not one corner of our organization that has not been asked to step up and respond to change on behalf of improving the lives of cancer patients and their families.