Survivors face many challenges, and our health care system simply isn’t geared to help people live well after the treatments are completed. As treatments improve and people with cancer live longer, more attention needs to be paid to their future health needs to improve the quality of life in survivorship. To know more, visit:

1. Elevating Survivorship
Elevate Leads the Way for a Better Cancer Survivorship
Experience For Survivors, Led by Survivors
Survivors face many challenges, and our health care system simply isn’t geared to help people live well after the
treatments are completed. As treatments improve and people with cancer live longer, more attention needs to be
paid to their future health needs to improve the quality of life in survivorship.
Elevating Survivorship, or “Elevate,” is a patient-led initiative to improve survivorship care in the United States.
Launched in 2018, NCCS created Elevate to identify gaps in survivorship care/services and deploy cancer survivor
advocates (Elevate Ambassadors) to fill those gaps in their community.
Elevate Ambassadors
Who better to help shape opportunities, improvements, and needs for survivors than survivors themselves?
The Elevate initiative centers around the training, mentoring, and continuing support of Elevate Ambassadors.
Since 2019, 24 individuals from across the country have been chosen by NCCS to serve as Ambassadors. During the
application process, Ambassadors propose a potential project to work on in their community — whether at a
hospital, oncology practice, community-based organization, or virtual community.
NCCS provides training, support, and networking opportunities to help Ambassadors develop and execute a plan of
action for their project. Ambassadors work to refine their projects during a two-day training, and are supported
throughout their term through collaborative webinars, 1:1 mentoring, and more.
2022 – 2023 Elevate Ambassadors
Get Involved
What is Advocacy?
Cancer Policy and Advocacy
Team (CPAT)
Elevating Survivorship
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Survivor Stories
Cancerversary
State-Based Cancer Advocacy
Latest News
Webinar – Beyond the
Checkbox: Delivering
Meaningful Cancer
Survivorship Care in a
Community Setting
Last week, NCCS hosted a conversation
with cancer control expert and
epidemiologist Otis Brawley, MD. NCCS
CEO Shelley Fuld Nasso moderated the
discussion. “We knew exactly who we
wanted to be our first guest speaker in
this series. Dr. Otis Brawley is a
Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at
Johns Hopkins University, an oncologist
and an epidemiologist. [...]
Read more
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2. Roxanne Berger, LPN
Nicole Drost
Jennifer Elliott
Alyssa Fischer-Reeder
Lorenzo Gallo
Jala Lockhart-Walker, MPH
Tori McCurdy, MSN, FNP-C, RN
Daria Ross
Arti Varanasi, PhD, MPH, CPH
Kaili Wegener
Natalie Zacharczyk
Read more about the advocates selected for the 2022 Elevate Ambassador program.
 2022 Elevate Ambassadors
Samples of Ambassador projects include:
1. Nationwide: Creation of Project Life, a navigation program for women living with Metastatic Breast Cancer. The
program uses lay navigators to assist women looking for support, access to treatments/clinical trials, and
mentorship.
2. South Dakota: A conference to educate survivors about what they should expect from their health care team
in a very rural area where survivorship resources are difficult to find.
3. Illinois: Create and share webinars on research design, genetic testing and clinical trials and create a directory
of patient-advocate-friendly medical advisors and a Survivors Assisting Scientists model that is being replicated
nationwide. CTAP initial training was held at the University of Chicago in February of 2020.
4. Alabama: Patient Advocacy Cancer Support Network – A group of concerned survivors in Birmingham, Alabama
who educate the local community on survivorship issues with a focus on issues specific to African-American
cancer survivors including telehealth classes and free iPads for those who don’t have the proper technology to
conduct telehealth visits.
5. South Florida: Education for the Spanish speaking communities for individuals and families with history of
hereditary cancer including help with access to genetic counseling services.
6. Conejo Valley, CA: Partnership with Los Robles Health System to train those within the system about health
equity. Webinar/roundtable was conducted in September 2020.
 Learn More: How Elevate Ambassadors are improving survivorship in their communities.
Webinar: Survivorship Needs
for People Living with
Advanced and Metastatic
Cancers
Last week, NCCS hosted a conversation
with cancer control expert and
epidemiologist Otis Brawley, MD. NCCS
CEO Shelley Fuld Nasso moderated the
discussion. “We knew exactly who we
wanted to be our first guest speaker in
this series. Dr. Otis Brawley is a
Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at
Johns Hopkins University, an oncologist
and an epidemiologist. [...]
Read more
Erin McGee Ferrell: The Art of
Cancer Advocacy
Advocate Spotlight May 2022 - Erin
McGee Ferrell
Erin McGee Ferrell’s
cancer…
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3. “Life After Surviving Cancer” “You’ve Survived Cancer. What Comes Next?”
Elevating Survivorship was featured in NPR’s On Point and in the Wall Street Journal.
Elevate In the News
Questions about Elevate? Contact us at elevate@canceradvocacy.org.
Grant funding for the 2022 Elevating Survivorship program provided by Bristol-Myers Squibb.
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