Most people with cancer receive cancer care in community settings, not academic medical centers. This case study highlights how a not-for-profit health system was able was able to promote healing and wellbeing while treating cancer by making integrative services a routine part of cancer care.
Rural health is about more than overcoming challenges. It’s about harnessing unique strengths: deep community ties, restorative natural settings, and a culture of resilience. Whole person care empowers patients and clinicians to build health and healing together, honoring the mind, body, and spirit. This guide focuses on strategies to implement whole person care in rural settings.
The Personal Health Inventory (PHI) is a resource that can help you understand the whole health of the person you are treating. It allows the individual to think about where they are in their health journey. A printable black-and-white version…
The Personal Health Inventory (PHI) is a resource that can help you understand the whole health of the person you are treating. It allows the individual to think about where they are in their health journey. This specific version is…
Evidence in a guideline from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO) supports using some integrative approaches to relieve anxiety and depression in adults with cancer. Anxiety and depression are common in people…
The SIO and the ASCO formed an expert panel to review the evidence about integrative treatments for cancer pain. The panel included experts in integrative oncology, medical oncology, radiation oncology, surgical oncology, palliative care, social sciences, mind-body medicine, nursing, and…
The Ann B. Barshinger Cancer Institute (Lancaster, Pennsylvania) is a community cancer center that delivers hands-on, personalized care and advanced medicine to the Lancaster community. The cancer institute supports the mind, body, and spirit of patients and their families.
During the Integrative Oncology Leadership Collaborative, the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center team focused on addressing health care disparities among cancer patients by planning group medical visits, beginning work to offer patient resources in Spanish, and working to make integrative medicine accessible to more cancer patients. The team moved toward offering integrative oncology.
During the Integrative Oncology Leadership Collaborative, the Inova Schar Cancer Institute team began to shift the focus from disease-specific care to whole person care by piloting the Personal Health Inventory (PHI) in one clinic and using this as an opportunity to better understand patients’ integrative care needs from day one.
Therapeutic writing, a form of targeted journal writing, is a self-care technique encouraging deeper reflection, processing, and discovery, and simultaneously, reflective distance. It can help your patients to gain clarity and insight about their experiences and themselves—and thereby, to heal, grow, and thrive. It can help them and you identify what matters most to them in life.