How the Financial Resource Center is Helping Families Focus on Healing

July 2, 2026

A cancer diagnosis changes everything. In an instant, everyday life is replaced by appointments, uncertainty, and an entirely new reality. Patients are suddenly expected to learn a new language of medical jargon, navigate complex treatment decisions, manage difficult side effects, coordinate care across multiple providers, and absorb life-changing information; all while continuing to manage the responsibilities of everyday life.

What often goes unrecognized is that many are also trying to figure out how they’ll pay their rent, afford groceries, get to treatment, or keep the lights on. Finding help shouldn’t be another burden patients have to shoulder when they should be focusing on their health, their families, and their care.

More than a medical diagnosis

For many patients, financial hardship isn’t just another stressor – it’s part of the cancer experience itself. Among the patients supported by Family Reach in 2025:

• 59% experienced food insecurity.
• 55% lacked reliable transportation to treatment.
• 54% were behind on utility payments.
• 44% had lost or were at risk of losing housing.

These challenges make it harder for patients to stay engaged in treatment while also adding an enormous emotional and financial burden. When patients are forced to choose between paying for treatment and paying for basic necessities, their health can suffer.

This is exactly why Family Reach created the Financial Resource Center.

Removing financial barriers to care

Launched in 2024, the Financial Resource Center was designed to meet patients where they are by providing multiple and interconnected pillars of support. We know that some families need immediate financial assistance to stay afloat. Others may need help navigating complex systems of support to secure food, transportation, housing, or utilities. Some simply need a listening ear or guidance to better understand what help is available and how to ask for it. Rather than expecting patients to navigate these systems alone, we’ve built a model that makes support easier to find and access.

The Financial Resource Center combines three complementary services:

• Financial Assistance to help families facing immediate financial hardship.
• Resource Navigation, connecting patients to more than 210,000 community-based resources through both self-guided technology and personalized navigation support.
• Educational resources that help patients understand and access available financial supports throughout their cancer journey.

Combined, these services create a coordinated experience that helps patients overcome financial hardship as a barrier to care.

The impact to date has been significant. In 2025, Family Reach reached more patients with the Financial Resource Center than ever before, providing nearly 147,000 services to more than 51,000 individuals across all 50 states. We did this by partnering with more than 1,200 treatment centers, along with a growing network of nonprofit and community-based organizations, ensuring our services reach patients where they receive care and within the communities they call home.

Creating space for what matters most: healing

At Family Reach, we believe financial support should be an integral part of quality cancer care, not an afterthought. By bringing together direct financial assistance, resource navigation, and education, we’re helping remove financial barriers that too often stand between patients and the care they need.

Cancer care should include more than medicine. It should include the resources that make treatment possible. No one should have to delay or forgo treatment because they can’t afford their basic necessities. When financial barriers are removed, patients can focus on what matters most: their treatment, their loved ones, and the moments that matter most.

Because cancer is hard enough.

Sources

1. (Knight et al.,2020)