She asked the gathered audience to look around at each other. “Because that’s who the American Cancer Society is,” she said. Speaking, was Angele Hartell of the American Cancer Society, at the local Relay For Life event last May.
Hartell is a staff partner in community relations for the Society’s Minnesota Region. She visits this area routinely. On a daily basis, her work connects her to northern folks who are enduring pain, stress, and uncertainty — but it also brings enrichment, she says. Hers is the gargantuan job of coordinating and communicating the nuts and bolts of patient programs, as well as assisting in fund raising.
In light of recent speculation and in an effort to define how proceeds from events like the Relay For Life and other fund raisers help people locally, Hartell talked with The Daily Journal.
Relay For Life donations are used to fight cancer through research, education, advocacy and patient support. But Hartell explained that it’s not accurate to say that proceeds from a single event stay in one area, because the larger entity to which it contributes and the accumulative sum it grows, helps the greater area in broader ways for a much longer period of time.
What people have contributed and accomplished by supporting the society is so woven into the fabric of everyday life, according to Hartell, that it may be hard to extrapolate all the benefits.
But the more people who use the programs, the more who will benefit, she said.
Hartell reports that a January news release startlingly shows Koochiching County as using the services of the ACS less than the state average.
But just what services are available and how to access them is a vague perception for many people, Hartell admits. One of her goals in Koochiching County is to provide more clarity for those who need help.
Before seeking assistance from the society, Hartell advises, people with cancer or their family members need to do one thing: Identify their most pressing need for which they intend to ask for help.
They should then call 800-227-2345 and be prepared to explain it. Help may be available through information, arrangements, and assistance with physical and financial needs.
“We’re not going to be able to meet every need,” Hartell said. “But people need to know what we can do.”
What the ACS Cancer Resource Network provides
Throughout every step of the cancer journey, the society provides patient information, day-to-day help and emotional support, said Hartell. The network seeks to help families navigate the various systems encountered with cancer; provide links to important programs and resources; and meet the needs of the medically under-served and newly diagnosed patients.
The society seeks to help ease the physical, financial and emotional toll of cancer, including in the following ways:
• Hope Lodge. Located in the Twin Cities and Rochester, the ACS offers free, temporary lodging assistance for patients and families who must travel outside their community for treatment.
• The society may be able to arrange free or discounted room for limited stays at hotels.
• The ACS offers “Look Good, Feel Better,” a free program to restore self esteem during treatment. Locally, Paulette Schanus of Paulette’s Body Shoppe is an agent and offers techniques to deal with appearance-related side effects such as skin damage and hair loss. “tlc Magalog” magazine is also available for women.
• The At Home Program strives to provide basic medical equipment to uninsured and underinsured cancer patients. Standard wheelchairs, commodes, canes, walkers, toilet seats and rails, tub bars, shower stools, transfer benches, semi-electric hospital beds and over-bed tables are some of those items.
• Items such as wigs, hats, turbans, breast prosthesis and bras may be available free of charge, or at reduced costs.
• The society can also help find answers to financial and insurance questions, as well as with referrals to prescription drug assistance.
• ACS offers Youth Cancer Survivor Scholarships. Summer camp for children and families is also offered.
Research has saved lives
in Koochiching County.
The time line that documents the Society’s research victories since its 1946 inception is powerful, although the daunting work continues.
“But it clearly demonstrates that anyone who has had a cancer diagnosis has been a very direct beneficiary of donations given to the ACS,” Hartell said.
From George Papanicolaou’s development of the Pap test to the finding that smoking was irrefutably linked to cancer to the studies that link prostate and breast cancer to sex hormones — the American Cancer Society has played a direct role and provided funding.
Among hundreds of funded discoveries are the hereditary cancer family syndrome, mammography to detect breast cancer, the finding that asbestos exposure increases risk of mesothelioma, the technique of bone marrow transplants and the positive methods of treating testicular cancer and leukemia.
The ACS created the Great American Smokeout, and developed the Cancer Prevention Studies which concluded the resulting damage from second-hand smoke as well as a plethora of additional information. From lumpectomies to the vaccine against the human papilloma virus which causes cervical cancer, to the dozens of chemotherapy drugs developed to fight cancer, as well as the complex research on DNA and RNA — the work of the ACS has been instrumental.
Society researchers are responsible for the increased cure rate of 81 percent for childhood leukemia; discovery of 5-FU chemotherapy for colon and other cancers; the drugs Herceptin and Tamoxifen for breast cancer; Rituxan for lymphoma, the PSA test for prostate cancer and much more.
Advocacy has succeeded in a reduction of smoking to under 20 percent in Minnesota, as well as free mammography for uninsured and underinsured women.
“Cancer Facts and Figures 2009,” the ACS annual statistic report, shows that cancer death rates dropped 19.2 percent among men during 1990-2005 and 11.4 percent among women during 1991-2005. This means that in recent years, about 100,000 people each year who would have died previously, are living to celebrate another birthday.
Local organizers are already meeting to plan the 2010 Relay For Life next spring. Laurie Humbert will serve as chairwoman, her second event since taking the post. Humbert is excited to show her “commitment to make a difference for one more person and this monster disease.”
Humbert may be reached at 285-3404.
Hartell can be contacted at angele.hartell@cancer.org.
The ACS reports that more than one in three Americans will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes. Relay For Life represents the hopes that those whose lives have been lost will never be forgotten, those who face cancer will be supported, and one day cancer will be eliminated.
Day or night on the nation’s only 24-hour
cancer information line, people fighting cancer can
talk to a trained cancer information specialist
and get referrals to community resources.
That number is 800-227-2345 (800-ACS-2345). A vast amount of information (including an online survivor community) is also available at www.cancer.org
