Livestrong Announces Inaugural 2020 Solution Grant Partners

From 231 applications from 36 states, Livestrong selects eight partners from across the nation to receive nearly $523,000 in funding.

AUSTIN, Texas – May 12, 2020 – Today, the Livestrong Foundation, a top-rated non-profit that leads the cancer frontier through advocacy and programs, announced its inaugural 2020 Solution Grant Partners, which includes eight leading cancer organizations from across the nation. Through this new mission initiative, Livestrong recognizes and funds organizations who are developing cutting-edge, inventive and sustainable solutions to overlooked cancer problems.

“Livestrong was delighted and humbled by the overwhelming response we received to our call for Solution Grant Partners,” said Victoria Threadgould, Livestrong Director of Grants Management. “With limited promotion of this new program, we received 231 applications from 196 organizations from 36 states and the ideas for cancer solutions ranged from designing new medical technology to stuffed animals to support children’s emotional needs. We want to extend our thanks to all who applied and to our outstanding committee of diverse internal and external reviewers, who represent national power players in the cancer community, for lending their expertise to our multi-stage review process.”

The inaugural class of Livestrong Solution Grant Partners includes:

• The Cure Starts Now Cancer Research Network, Cincinnati, Ohio
  The Cure Starts Now is the first cancer charity dedicated to finding the “Homerun Cure™” to eliminate cancer as a whole.
• B.I.G. Love Cancer Care, Austin, Texas
  B.I.G. Love provides love and support to inpatient children with cancer at Texas Children’s Hospital and The University of Texas MD Anderson Children’s Cancer Hospital in Houston and Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin.
• Hopecam Inc., Reston, Va.
  Hopecam’s mission is to help children with cancer overcome the burden of social isolation via voice over Internet technology.
• Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, Washington, D.C.
  The Smith Center serves people with cancer by through healing practices that utilize the arts to explore physical, emotional, and mental wellness and lead to life-affirming changes.
• VitalHearts, Denver, Colo.
  VitalHearts cares for care-providers through its program, the Secondary Trauma Resiliency Training, which offers a comprehensive approach to secondary trauma and compassion fatigue.
• Wonders & Worries, Austin, Texas
  Wonders & Worries provides free, professional support for children and teenagers through a parent’s serious illness, including cancer.
• University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.
  FOCUS (Follow-up for HPV-related Oropharynx cancer Concentrated on Unequal Symptom change) is an initiative from the University of Michigan Departments of Otolaryngology and Radiation Oncology that aims to decrease the number of costly visits required after completion of treatment for HPV-related oropharyngeal cancers and instead monitors patients remotely through monthly survivorship-focused electronic surveys.
• The Pablove Foundation, Los Angeles, Calif.
  The Pablove Foundation improves the lives of children living with cancer through the arts and invests in underfunded, cutting-edge pediatric cancer research.

“This process to find our next Solutions Grant Partners produced some incredibly energetic, disruptive and creative solutions,” said Suzanne Stone, Livestrong Chief Strategic Solutions & Programs Officer. “While we wish we could afford to fund them all, the novel ideas that were submitted give us reason to be hopeful for the future and motivate us to double down on our efforts to blaze the new frontier in cancer care.”

In addition to providing critical programs and services to those affected by cancer, Livestrong has recently evolved by moving to where the larger gaps in care exist. It finds those gaps by listening to cancer survivors about their needs. In taking aim at the gaps in care, Livestrong knows solutions are only possible through collaboration and it continues its legacy of partnering with the best and brightest across the cancer continuum. The organization sought diverse perspectives from the cancer community to define its four new funding priorities: post-treatment care, patient and caregiver education, comprehensive quality of life services, and streamlining systems and care. In its renewed commitment to serving people affected by cancer now, Livestrong is striving continuously and relentlessly to finding new solutions to everyday cancer problems and fixing them for good.