Programs and Services

Being a teenager is hard enough, but a life-threatening illness introduces a complex set of obstacles that younger children and older adults rarely face. The Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) cancer program is specifically designed to improve outcomes for patients ages 15 to 39 by addressing these unique psychosocial and clinical gaps. This program focuses on improving clinical outcomes through standardized care, increased clinical trial participation and helping patients navigate a medical system that often feels split between pediatric and adult providers. Beyond medical treatment, the program focuses on the emotional and social hurdles that define this stage of life.

Helping children cope with their disease through creativity. Art therapy is the therapeutic use of art to help people self-express and cope. Many young patients have difficulty verbalizing their feelings surrounding diagnosis, illness, and hospitalization. Through creating art and reflecting on one's process and product, young patients can experience a non-threatening outlet for expression, increased coping skills, distraction from symptoms and pain, and normalization. The healing power of art and creativity can help improve quality of life, while offering a means for the unconscious to find expression

Teaching a child to cope with the stress of an illness is an essential part of the healing process. Our Child Life Specialists are trained to use child specific techniques to ensure the child understands the treatment.

Our Clinical Research Coordinator assists with daily operations for clinical trials, including screening and enrolling eligible participants, maintaining meticulous research data and case reports, and ensuring strict regulatory compliance with FDA, IRB, and HIPAA guidelines. All is done to provide pediatric patients with access to innovative treatment options through clinical research trials.

Part of being a kid is being in school. Our educational liaisons advocate for patients and serve as a go-between so students can continue their education throughout their illness.

A family experiences a host of emotional and financial stressors when they are faced with the shocking diagnosis of cancer or a blood disorder. With expenses such as child care for healthy siblings, and reduced employment for the parent that stays with their sick child, they may have trouble paying their rent or mortgage or putting food on the table. This is where The Valerie Fund restores a certain measure of "quality of life" for our patients and families in the form of Emergency Funding.

Our financial counselors alleviate the stress related to paying for a child's care by managing the often confusing medical bills and insurance claims that pile up so that parents can focus on caring for their child.

Sometimes patients need more than traditional medicine to manage the side effects of a serious illness. The non-invasive therapies we use in our integrative medicine program bring much needed relief to even our smallest patients.

Our nurse navigators serve as the patient’s advocate, ensuring timely and efficient care by identifying and eliminating barriers from diagnosis through the trajectory of one’s illness.

Our Registered Dietitian Nutritionists help parents and kids get creative to ensure children on treatment get the nutrition they need to get the calories they need to heal and stay strong. This program helps ensure patients have access to comprehensive, personalized, and evidence-based medical nutrition therapy.

Our Palliative Care Program begins with our palliative care social worker, who works with our families through the trajectory of illness, from diagnosis, treatment, and in some cases, the end of life. Our Palliative Care Program is designed to improve a child's overall quality of life throughout all stages of treatment. This highly personalized care integrates all support services to relieve the child's symptoms so he or she can live life to the fullest.

Psychologists make up part of the team that is on site at all of our centers. This ensures that our patients are treated both medically and emotionally in one location.

Our Children’s Center Recreation Therapists work closely with patients and families to provide meaningful activities that reduce stress and anxiety, encourage self-expression, and promote positive coping throughout hospitalizations, clinic visits, procedures, and long-term treatment. Their role also includes fostering social connection, celebrating milestones, and creating moments of joy and normalcy in a medical environment.

Our Sickle Cell Program ensures that patients with this blood disorder receive proper treatment and are educated in managing their long-term health.

The Valerie Fund is committed to treating the entire patient. So while doctors, such as oncologists and hematologists, work with patients to treat the disease medically, our social workers focus on the mental and social health of the patient and the entire family throughout the ordeal.

With more young people surviving childhood cancer, there is an increasing need to identify and support survivors as they grow into adolescence and adulthood. Our experts help navigate potential challenges as our patients move beyond treatment.

Patients cannot heal if they do not receive the proper regular treatment. When families do not have access to their own transportation to get their child to those critical appointments, we provide it for them.