Empowering Patients Throughout a Cancer Journey

Empowering Patients Throughout a Cancer Journey...

When a person is diagnosed with cancer, their life is forever changed. Facing what lies ahead is frightening and confusing, and despite the best intentions of loved ones, most people suddenly feel completely alone.

That's why The Wellness Community is such an important place for people to find after they've entered into the uncertain world of oncologists, surgeons, and treatment options. At TWC, everyone affected by cancer--patients, loved ones, caregivers--are provided the valuable education and resources to actively change the course of their treatment and path to recovery. All of our programs are evidence-based, led by licensed facilitators, and are offered free of charge to everyone who enters our doors.

The medical community now applauds our efforts as they see patients who attend our programs become strong enough to face their traditional treatments with more knowledge, strength, and sense of community. We offer support groups, educational forums, nutrition consultations, gentle exercise classes, social opportunities, and many other programs that bring people together so they know they are not alone. Laughter and hope resonate throughout our halls, creating an encouraging environment during each class and activity.

But no matter how wonderful our programs are, they can only impact the lives of the people who know about them! That's where our Microsoft resources have been so valuable. Thanks to the donations of these powerful software programs, more people than ever before are entering our facility seeking support, simply because we can now educate more people about our services. Our increase in program participants has been a direct result of:

• Publisher: Thanks to this creative software, we can produce colorful, eye-catching fliers that are attractive enough for local hospitals to post throughout their campuses.
• Excel-Helps us manage our database of patients and allows us to track the programs that are best serving our Participatnts. Our spreadsheets allow us to analyze what programs are best attended and help us compare dates and times that best work with our participant's schedules. They also help us keep track of each patient's attendance so we can reach out with encouraging words if we see their attendance has dropped.
• Outlook: We've created a new Email campaign to everyone in our database, alerting them of new programs, highlighting prominent speaker visits, and helping them to manage their visits to our facility around their treatment schedules.
• PowerPoint: This tool has allowed us to produce impressive presentations to potential donors, and helped us acquire the biggest donor we've had to date. Our presentations would not be possible without PowerPoint!
• Word-We've put together detailed, professional proposals for grants and donation requests, while also allowing us the ease of integrating tables and graphs to show the impact our services have for people facing a cancer diagnosis. In addition, we can easily assemble press releases that we know will be read by assignment editors, thanks to the universal use of Word.
• SharePoint Designer--Our calendar is always changing so it's imperative that people have an online resource to keep abreast of offerings at our facility. Our website is now always up to date, notifying the public--and especially the medical community who values our programs' effectiveness--the abilty to check at a moment's notice what they can expect at our facility each day.

A few years ago, making our services known to patients and medical professionals was difficult. But today, thanks to the innovative and easy to use software produced by Microsoft, we are easily able to let people know that we are here, offering free services and a haven for them to gather with others who can share their challenges and triumphs. For each web page created, each flier produced, and each email deployed, lives are forever changed.