Memorial Hermann opens Greater Houston area’s first cancer survivorship program

THE WOODLANDS, Texas — Meeting the needs of cancer patients outside of medical services is Canopy, a Cancer Survivorship Center, on Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Hospital’s campus.

The survivorship program provides free services that will provide educational resources and therapeutic outlets to all cancer patients and their caregivers.

“It’s certainly the first-of its kind around here with the ability to elevate life above cancer and offer free programs and services for any person or family that has been touched by cancer,” said Josh Urban, senior vice president and CEO of Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Hospital. “Most of the time we focus so much on the clinical care of cancer but not all of the support mechanisms that go around that.”

After three and a half years of planning, Canopy’s facility has reached completion, featuring a full demonstration kitchen for nutritional education, large and small support group rooms, a resource library with computers and a children’s playroom. Carolyn Allsen, RN, BSN, OCN, oncology nurse navigator, said patients are proactive and readily seek information about their cancer and its healing process.

“They want some guidance, and that’s what we’re here to do,” Allsen said.

Canopy’s provision doesn’t end at educational resources. Through the philanthropic services from community members, Canopy is able to host art therapy programs, yoga, tai chi, dance and knitting classes, book clubs, emotional support groups for both patients and caregivers, massage therapy, bras, breast prosthesis, wigs and scarves — all at no charge to the patient.

“Canopy will give all those programs a home, and it will also give us the opportunity to grow them, so we’ll have those things on-site,” Amanda Poole, facility coordinator, said. “All of the people that will be teaching these classes are professionals from this community that will be donating their time…The wonderful thing about Canopy is the sky’s the limit. We can think completely out of the box and get creative if we want to.”

Linda Nelson, Director of Marketing at Memorial Hermann The Woodlands Hospital, said the project was spurred when an committee member of Memorial Hermann’s In the Pink of Health took a friend to M.D. Anderson for her cancer treatment. The patient said she wished there was a cancer survivorship center in the Greater Houston area. In the Pink donated $10,000 in seed money to spend a whole year doing survivorship site visits across the country and constructing focus groups to see how they could address the needs of Houston area cancer patients.

After visiting the Gathering Place in Ohio and the Patrick Dempsey Center in Maine, Canopy’s starters created three different focus groups — one for patients, one for providers and one for caregivers. Each focus group expressed that they wanted a facility that was connected to the hospital with safe and easy parking, and they wanted to atmosphere to feel nothing like a medical center.

“This was not something that we just threw together,” Nelson said. “We really want to meet the needs of the community… There’s an expense to this that we’re not passing on to the community or to the hospital. These are all philanthropy dollars, and we have some significant donations without even going out to ask.”

Although affiliated with Memorial Hermann, the non-profit survivorship center is open to all cancer patients regardless of which medical center is treating them.

“As a not-for-profit, we’re charged with providing benefits out there and resources into the community as a whole,” Nelson said. “We just felt it was the right thing to do. When we have a facility that can offer what we can to caregivers and to the patients, let’s just open it up. It’s just the right thing to do, and Memorial Hermann does the right thing.”

The facility, located in Medical Plaza 1 at 1120 Medical Plaza Drive, Suite 250, will officially open its doors to the public July 5 and will operate Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. For more information about Canopy, visit www.thewoodlandscanopy.org or call 713-897-4400.