Healthology Symposium

Now, some of you have just joined us, and we welcome you to the Healthology symposium, where we celebrate ways for achieving healthy diversity. Through healthology, the School of Health Sciences promotes collaboration to improve the health and well being of all people and communities. We're very excited to reach the pinnacle of our event. For this, we provide our sincere thanks to the Apricity Foundation for their keynote sponsorship. We now invite doctor Tim Kasprzak, Apricity representative, and School of Health Sciences board member to the podium.

Thank you, Dean Ball. I'm glad I have some notes here. The Apricity Foundation exists to serve others. It's a Texas based organization. They create and support unique programs designed to entertain, educate, inspire, strengthen, and build within communities. The Apricity Foundation is pleased to sponsor the 2025 keynote Speakers of the Healthology Symposium, Michael Spain, and Gina Kel Spain. After losing their spouses from cancer within weeks of each other, Michael and Gina met, shared their experiences, and wonderfully came together to raise their five children in a blended family. Driven by their personal experiences, they started the New Day Foundation to provide financial, emotional and social support to families struggling with the burden of cancer. I'm getting chills just reading this. Their story is told in the best selling memoir, The Color of Rain, which was adopted into a hallmark original movie, and then they shared their story of faith, hope, and love nationally. Please join me in welcoming Michael Spehn and Gina Kel Spehn.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

It's great to be here. I'm going to have a seat.

Yes, well, take the clicker with you. There you go.

Thanks.

Forgive forgive the notes. I don't usually work from notes, but I played pickleball in Naples, Florida last week, so I'm officially old. This has been quite a day, a long day of deep thinkers and the intellectual elite of our community. Gina and I are here, of course, to put an end to all of that. It is a joy to be with you. When Gina and I first began the New Day Foundation, it was at our kitchen table. It was born out of a set of very personal experiences, of course, some of which we'll share with you tonight. But at that time, there were no studies, there was no data. There wasn't even the terminology that we now use to describe the arena that we were endeavoring to work in. Today, some 18 years later. There now are all of those things, and they underscore the basic truths that we all recognize, and that is that patients need more than medicine to survive and get well. The National Institutes of Health produced a study that was startling to me. They found that out of all the contributing factors that go into a patient's treatment out, 20% takes place in the healthcare arena at the doctor's office, at PT, in the hospital, 20%. Tonight, Gina and I are going to talk to you all a little bit about our experience with the other 80%. I have a friend, Ed. He lives across the street from me. He stands about six foot four. He does triathlons. He's got a big swoop of hair and some eyeglass. He looks a little bit like Clark Kent. Interestingly, Ed has a superpower. We were sitting on my patio after Kathy, my wife Kathy and I had moved into the neighborhood, and Ed and his wife, Heather were with us. The kids were all playing baseball in the yard and I had asked about something I had seen in our neighborhood the day before. As I came home from work, I saw on our neighbor's porch, there was this red igloo cooler. Ed explained to me that in our neighborhood, when someone has a cancer diagnosis, the neighbors all get together and organize meals for the family. But because chemo treatments can mean unusual sleep patterns, they put a red cooler on the front porch and then whosever turn it is that day, they fill it up with the day's meals. That way, the family can just eat whenever it's convenient for them. Everyone thought that was a great idea, except for me. I hated those red coolers. I hated them. As soon as it was explained to me, all I could think of was the kids who lived in that house. Every day, as they got off the bus, every day, as they rode their bike down the street or played in the front yard, they would be confronted by this symbol of death on their front porch, and it broke my heart. I told everybody, Kathy thought that was the most cynical thing she had ever heard in her life. As everyone was shaking their heads at me, one of the kids hit a ball over our heads, and it landed on our roof, and then it bounced to our garage roof, and it rolled down and got caught in the garage gutter. We all ran to the driveway. I really took in for the first time just how high the garage gutter was on my new house. People pointed at the shiny new and very unused ladder that was in my garage. My father in law had given it to me as a gift when we moved into the house. Sit here, You going to own a house, you got to get on a ladder and fix things. No, sir. No. Kathy knew that by the time I got to the second step of every ladder, I felt like I was falling from space. Well, my new friend, Ed, recognized this. He turned to his wife, he said, Come on, Heather, we got this. She stood in front of him, and he took her by the waist, and he threw her into the air, and he caught her underneath her shoes. She went up like this, reached into the gutter, and tossed the ball back to the kids who ran off joyfully back to their game. He then did one of these like this and gently placed her back on the driveway. Kathy and I couldn't believe what we just saw. I looked at my new friend, Ed, and I said, You're Batman. I know I'd said he looked like Clark Kent a few minutes ago, but he looked like Batman. I of felt a little bit like the boy wonder. What I didn't know was that Ed and Heather had met at the University of Michigan where they were both collegiate cheerleaders. This was nothing new for them. Now, I told you that Ed had superpower, but tossing his wife around driveways was not what I was talking about. I would come to learn that my friend across the street, his superpower was his generosity. About a year after this little baseball incident, Kathy started to get headaches that were different, and then they wouldn't go away. We took her in, and they ran some tests, and then they did some scans. Then a tall man in a white coat took us into a small room and he said the words inoperable brain cancer and 17 days after that, she died. About a week after her funeral, my phone rang, and it was my friend Ed from across the street. All he said to me was, open your garage door. I did, and there was Ed pushing a giant deep freezer up my driveway. He pushed it right past me and into our garage and plugged it into the wall. He said, My friend, I know how you feel about those red coolers, so we got you this. It'll be in your garage, out of sight, out of the way. I said, Well, thank you. But I don't really have anything to put in it. He said, I know. I've seen you cook. Keep your garage open for a couple hours. Over the next half a day, neighbors from all over, many of whom I had never met yet. They brought prepared meals all wrapped up with instructions on how to thaw them properly and cook them and they filled that freezer to the brim. Ed knew me. He knew what I needed, and he didn't ask. He didn't wring his hands. He took action. He simply acted out of love and generosity. Both Gina and I have experienced cancer in very intimate, very personal ways. Her own husband, Matt, had a three year battle with cancer, and he lost that battle on Christmas night of all nights. Matt Kell left behind a loving wife and two small children under the age of seven. Through a set of very strange circumstances, Gina and I met and became friends. We had the idea, let's get the kids together and show them that they're not alone in their grief, so we did. I said, Look, come over to our house, I've got a freezer full of food. She said, Terrific. I'll bring a salad. She showed up with nine bags of groceries.

I did.

We still haven't gotten the garlic smell out of the house. We began to walk together in our shared grief, and that gave way to a shared sense of purpose. We realized that we had gone through some of life's most painful experiences. We experienced the same thing that everyone does when they suffer a deep loss. But we were also lucky because we had money and family, and friends, and church, and crazy neighbors rolling deep freezers up our driveway. Those blessings led us to create New Day at our kitchen table. We were inspired by our faith and a deep sense of gratitude, as well as an acknowledgment that not every family has the same access to the same resources. We got together, we got married, we blended our family, created the Rochester Michigan version of the Brady Bunch. Although she complains that we never really got, what was the maid's name?

Alice.

Alice. Ultimately, there was a book, The Color of Rain. We'll sign some for anybody who wants one. There was a movie by the same name. For a while, it was the highest-rated Hallmark movie in history. I think we've lost that title though.

I think so. It's been a minute.

Lacey Chabert was my movie wife. She's gone on to make 700 other Hallmark movies.

That's true, too.

But all of those experiences, including being invited to share our story in rooms like this, all of it is with the hope and purpose of serving New Day and shining a light on the little part that we play in the village, they say that it takes. As we move through the healthcare world over these last 18 years plus, it's been our experience that a lot of folks don't talk about this 80% enough. They spend a great deal of time talking about treatment of diseases rather than treatment of people. Tonight, it's our privilege to be able to share with you a bit of our journey and about how New Day serves that other 80% in patient outcomes.

Yeah, everywhere we go, Michael and I have the privilege of being able to talk to people about cancer, which always makes us the most fun couple in every room we're in. Yes, we are very popular that way. I'm probably going to stand more at the podium than Michael does. He's very animated, don't you think? I'm going to vouch for something, that ladder thing is true because I'm pretty sure it's still as shiny as it was the day he got it, and that would be pretty darn close to 20 years ago now. Anyway. The truth of this night is that as hard as it is to talk about subjects like cancer, I actually love to share the meaningful work that we do at New Day. It's a joy actually to do this work. We have an incredible team, we have a great culture at New Day Foundation for families. We always find things to laugh about, to celebrate, and to truly be grateful for. I think that's what our team needs to have in order to do the work that we do every day. I know firsthand the fear and anxiety that cancer brings. I know I spoke to a couple people tonight. You've been there. But my experience is a little different. I've been a caregiver many times over. It started when I was 22 years old. My grandmother came to live with us, she was facing Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. It was when I was 25 that my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer and succumbed to that disease 19 months later. Six years after that, my husband was diagnosed with cancer, as you heard from Michael. He died three years later. Seven years after that, my mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer. She was diagnosed with lung cancer, never smoked a day in her life. From the day she was diagnosed until the day she died was three weeks. Three years after that, our son, Sam, at the age of 14, was diagnosed with Stage 4 glioblastoma. I'm happy to say that it's nine years later, and he is a survivor. On that whole list of people, he is the sole survivor of that group. He's also a graduate of Oakland University and hoping to enter into the MBA program this year. [APPLAUSE] Thank you very much. Very proud of him. If you really want to be inspired, I would recommend pulling up his commencement speech from high school. It was in 2019. His name is Sam Kell. Google it. It's worth the nine or so minutes that it is. It's really great speech. But we could do a whole other healthology conference on Sam because he's been written up in journals. His cancer journey was really unique. Precision medicine was involved, and I could talk about that for days. But here we are. We have other things to talk about today. I know that this is a lot. I know some of this hits very close to home for some of you, for some of you, maybe it's overwhelming. A lot of you are in medical care, so it maybe is just like, yeah, we see it every day; we know about this. But I'll say this, my street education and caregiving and then my daily job working on leading a non-profit organization that helps cancer patients puts me in a really unique position to advocate for people and to serve people every day. As my late husband Matt Kell would say, these are the gifts of cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, there are 66,000 people diagnosed every year in the state of Michigan alone, just one state, 66,000 newly diagnosed people. Now, to me, that's a shocking statistic. For many of you who study these fields, maybe not. But the other part of that stat is that 18,000 of those are going to be children, which is really heartbreaking. I always say this cancer doesn't play, and cancer is a thief, and it comes to steal our life and our loved ones, and our finances, and our emotional well-being. But that's why we do what we do at New Day Foundation. We do what we can to take back from cancer. That's our goal. What is our mission? It's to provide financial and emotional resources to Michigan families who are facing cancer. Every day, people apply to our organization for assistance, and they come to us primarily through hospital social workers. Now, it can also come through other healthcare workers within the hospital system. We're doing our part right now to make sure that everyone at every level that touches an oncology patient knows about us because we also know that the social workers are very short-staffed these days, and there's a high level of turnover in that field. But they come to us through social workers primarily. We have 120 hospital partners across the state of Michigan. They apply on behalf of the financially and emotionally at-risk patients. Now, some of these patients have received psychosocial screenings, others have received more of a subjective screening. If you don't look the part, you might never be asked if you have any issues with your finances or your emotional needs. But sometimes people who it's very obvious that they might are recognized and those that aren't get bypassed, so they're overlooked. Other times we'll have patients that will come to New Day through our website. They'll hear about us through word of mouth, they'll see us on the web, they'll get our phone number, and they reach out to us. In that case, we work the process in reverse. Now, we're letting the hospital know you have a patient who is struggling financially and emotionally, we're here to support. We want to verify, of course, that they are your patient, etc. But the point is we work as a team with the hospital. It's really important that we have great relationships and that we know people at multiple levels so that we can do this good work together. We're the only organization in Michigan that does this combination of support for patients. It's emotional support combined with this financial support that we do, and it's for any type of cancer. I don't know if people realize this, but cancer is more than pink, sometimes we forget that. New Day has actually helped patients with 70 different types of cancers last year alone. I think that's pretty incredible that we sometimes forget that there are so many other types. Every Monday morning, I should say, at 11:00 AM our program team gathers in the conference room, and we meet to talk about the unique needs of all of the families that have applied for support. We ask for a lot of information from families. We're getting medical treatment information, we're getting their financial information, we're getting bills, bank statements, sometimes tax returns, and more. They're sharing quite a bit of personal information with us. Maybe the most important thing that we talk about is what our team, our family support specialists have learned in the process of simply talking to a family. That's where I think the most work is happening, is when we actually stop and listen and take time and have patience because I can't tell you how often we hear, gosh, you're the first person that listened to me. You're the first person that answered the phone. It's really hard to get a human being on the other end of a line, it's go to this website, it's go visit this link. It's really meaningful that we take that time to listen to people. All of this information that we gather and all of these conversations are giving us what we need to protect the financial and emotional health of families to help give them the courage and the resilience that they need to persevere. That's really what they need. So I want to tell you about one of the families, the Davis family. Jenny Davis was living in England, and at the time, was married and had suddenly gone through a very unexpected and difficult divorce. Jenny was with two little boys, I don't know what happened, I don't know the backstory, but the dad completely left the family, emptied the bank account, they had nothing, and she didn't know where to go, what to do. Immediately, she picked up, moved her kids back home to her parents' house in Michigan, right here in our community.

She had to pretty much be resilient and tenacious and pull herself back together. She went back to school, got a teaching certificate, started a teaching job, bought her first home, had the two little boys and grow in their hockey program, which she was so excited about and they bought a puppy and life was good. Then there was cancer. She got diagnosed with Stage 3, multifocal with metastasis. She was overwhelmed and depleted and she had felt like she had just gotten through so much. But she knew that she could do this. She knew she could do it. She said, if I can do what I just went through, moving my family from England and starting over, I can do this too. She started treatment. She went and had surgery done and she began to get into chemotherapy, and she started to realize she had taken a lot of time off of work. Suddenly, she didn't have quite as much income coming in and things were getting tight. As that continued, Jenny started to do something that was really troubling and that is, she would go into school and she would teach. Then in the middle of a lesson, she would excuse herself. She would go out to the bathroom. She would throw up. She'd clean herself up and she'd come back to class. This went on for a few weeks and she was completely exhausted. At night, she would come home and she was mentally robbing Peter to pay Paul, trying to figure out how she wasn't going to lose her house. She was afraid to go to the grocery store. She was actually afraid to go to class because she had all those little rugrats running around who are always sick and you know how kids are. She was terrified of that. She was terrified of the grocery store, she didn't have the energy to do that, either. She was also worried if she was going to have to pull her kids out of hockey, which she just wanted them to have their hockey. Finally, Jenny reached a breaking point. She was sitting in the infusion chair and the chemo nurse came up to her, she grabbed her hands and she looked at her in the eyes and she said, Jenny, you can't keep doing this. You have to ask for help. She said, I want you to hear something. You need to call New Day Foundation for family. She goes, I'm going to connect you to the social worker. You need to get in touch with him today and she did. Now, like many of the families that we help at New Day, Jenny would be considered an Alice family. This is not Alice, the maid from Brady Bunch that you mentioned earlier. This is something that is referred to by the United Way as a family who is asset limited, income constrained and employed. They don't have a lot in savings. They get by. They're enjoying life. But any moderate disruption to their financial situation, whether it's an increase in expenses or some sudden loss of income, can really destabilize that family. It's important to know that about 41% of the families that live in the state of Michigan are considered Alice families. That might be shocking to some. It was to me when I first heard it. Jenny, of course, immediately qualified for help from our organization. We were able to cover her mortgage for several months, along with providing her with groceries that were actually delivered to her doorstep by some really generous volunteers that we've had over the years. We gave her what she needed so that she could focus on treatment. She could stop going into work unnecessarily and really focus on what mattered most, which was her healing. That's what she needed to do the whole time. Two years went by and Jenny came back to us and she had thanked us and we had a really great relationship with her. This is what she said at one of our events that she spoke at our celebrity lip sync battle, which is a really fun event, if you ever want to and have an entertaining night out. She said this. "The crushing weight of reality fell on my shoulders. Fear gripped me, but it wasn't a fear of dying. It wasn't that I didn't want to have cancer. I simply couldn't afford to have cancer." He went on to say that words cannot express the relief I felt when I discovered there was help. It meant I could take a few days off work when I was too sick to go in. It meant my pride and fierce determination to push myself disappeared. New Day found a way to support me and let me maintain my dignity. Because of New Day, the financial shock of cancer did not ruin us and my boys were able to keep playing hockey. She just wanted her boys to be able to glide out on that ice and for an hour every week, not have to think about the fact that their mom was sick. That mattered so much to her. Jenny Davis is the face of financial toxicity. Financial toxicity is the issue that we deal with every day at New Day. It's something that reaches beyond the high cost of cancer and it directly impacts a patient's ability to get well. Literally it affects their life expectancy in many cases. Financial toxicity encompasses two things. There's an objective financial burden. That's what we talked about earlier. It's those increased expenses and that loss of income. I want you to think about this. When my son had cancer, he had to have treatment in Chicago. There was no proton center here in Michigan at the time. We would drive there and we had about three months of treatment in Chicago. He wanted to be back every weekend because his love of basketball, which you will hear about in his commencement speech. He had to be back every weekend. We were driving back and forth and by the way, it was the winter months. We were there from late December to early February. During that time we were, I mean, seven hours to Chicago, which it should take five. I mean, we had a lot of long hours and stressful travel and it's costly. It's costly to do that. There's many families in rural communities in Michigan, for example, who are nowhere near a hospital center and have to travel two plus hours for just treatment on a daily basis. The cost of the gas alone or disability, for example, if you work for a really great company and you have to go on disability, say goodbye to two-thirds of your income. By the way, your expenses are not going down. They're going up. It affects everyone. You don't have to just be in an Alice household. You can be in any household. We also see a lot of people get fired, which is the most tragic thing. We've talked to attorneys. In fact, Mike Morse was a judge at the lip sync battle. We talked to Mike Morse about this and he's actually doing some research for us right now about it. But people get fired a lot. They just don't have the bandwidth to fight it once they've been let go. As you can imagine, that objective financial burden is pretty significant. There's also a subjective financial burden and that's really how that financial stress and that crunch affects their well being. This can really be debilitating.

This is the point where people start making those decisions to go in to teach a class and throw open a trash can, rather than stay home and rest your body and get well. This is the people who will now start to make decisions to cut pills in half or not fill the prescription at all or mistreatments, things like that. We see this a lot because they're afraid of the financial ramifications. What is the solution to all of this? Well, I can tell you what it's not. I talked to someone about this today. It's not a binder filled with pamphlets, which are nice. There's a lot of information there, but who is going to read it? I was handed one when Sam got diagnosed. I threw it in a corner. I'm a professional. I deal in this space every day of my life. I thought, what a waste. The other is the database zip codes, where you type in your five-digit zip code and up pops every resource available in your area. Well, great. Filters, awesome. There's still 50 resources that you have to sift through. Now, we're listed on those database websites, and for the most resourceful people, excellent. But for the people who really don't have that ability, it's too much. It's overwhelming. What is the solution? Well, I contend that the solution is people. We just need people to listen, to pick up the phone, to be caring and compassionate, and provide the vital resources and point people and guide people in the right direction. Having that person who says, I see you, I hear you. I'm here to help you, that's what our team is at New Day for a lot of these families. Oftentimes, a patient or caregiver, we talk to caregivers a lot, their first interaction with New Day is very personal. It's very confidential. We try to provide a safe place for families. We try to develop trust with families because it's trust that is maybe the most important. Like I said earlier, they're sharing a lot of sensitive information with us. They're trusting us with so much. By developing that trust, we become more than a resource for them. Through every step in the process, our compassionate team goes above and beyond to ensure that the families have everything that they need to persevere, to have hope, and to survive cancer well. There are three pillars in cancer care as we see it. There's diagnostics, there's your colonoscopies, your mammograms, your PSA tests, etc. We all understand it. Medical treatment, we understand it. We need it. We need good research to back up that medical care. These are the two most important and most common. There's a third pillar that's often overlooked.Sometimes people think about support services as things more like wish trips to Disney, or maybe yoga or acupuncture, or things like that. But I think those are nice to have services, and they're helpful services, and they're important services. But I think that there are other programs that are more what I would define as essential programs. Now, think of this 63% of cancer patients who are surveyed, and they rank financial distress from medical care more serious than the prospect of losing their life. Have you heard this statistic because it shocked me? I still can't believe it, and I talk about this a lot. Six out of 10 people they're more worried about the fact that they're gonna survive and have to deal with the financial ramifications than they are about the fact they might die. I find that to be staggering. This is why New Day offers what we consider to be essential programs. There's four of them. Financial assistance. We've talked a little bit about that. This is the very practical, non-glamorous work of New Day. We're paying people's bills for them. Now, you have to have dependent children in order to receive financial assistance from us. That is the one and only program that requires that. All of the other programs are available to any cancer patient in active treatment. But that particular program, you have to have dependence. We pay for housing, food, utilities, transportation, insurance, other miscellaneous things. It's a really important thing. If you qualify, it's an incredible program, and it makes a huge difference in your cancer journey. Groceries. We just talked about this on Monday in our office. Grocery support sounds simple. It gives somebody a gift card. Big deal. Well, here's an example from Monday that we just had a family. Mom has five kids. She's single. She went to a food bank a couple of weeks ago. They gave her milk, and they gave her bread. That is all they had. They had nothing really of nutritional value there. She found enough money to buy ramen, and for two weeks, she had been feeding her five children milk, bread, and ramen. She had no other source., She didn't even know how to get a snap card, nothing. She had no resources. Finally, she gets connected. It's people like this that we're here to help. We are stepping in at a very critical moment in her care. She has no nutrition for herself. She's fighting for her life. She's stage 4, and she has five little kids. Groceries mean something to that mom, and they mean something to most of the families that we support. Emotional support. That's the third program. I was talking with someone here tonight about that, as well. We have an incredible list on our website of professional counselors. We vetted them. They know us. They are partnered with us. They offer us pro bono services, discounted services. Patients get right into the top of the list. They're not waiting for two or three or four weeks. It's available to the patient, the caregiver, the kids, the moms, the dads, the couples, whoever needs it, it's available, and it's available up to a year after you finish treatment. It's a great program. Our partners across the state literally use that list as a resource for themselves. If you need help, there's a great list of professional and very diverse, multiple languages, ethnicities, you name it. The last piece is resource navigation. I covered this. It's our version of the antidote to the binder and the database zip code. We provide that service to all of our families. When we survey our own families, eight out of 10 of them said that by receiving support from New Day, they were able to remain medically compliant, that our help made that possible for them. to me, that's the thing I think I'm most grateful for in doing this work. I didn't even know when we started just how important it was going to be. One of the things I will point out, too is that we have served families in 79 of the 83 counties in the state of Michigan. We're investing a lot of money and time, and energy into rural communities. They're hard to reach. There's so many families in those communities, and they're really very under-resourced. We've done a little bit of work there, and we've also done some work in Grand Rapids. I'm curious. Has anybody here heard of BAMF Health? A couple of people I see. Great. BAMF Health, B-A-M-F. It might sound like one thing as an acronym, but it's actually bold, advanced medical future. That's what it stands for. This is the world's most comprehensive Theranostic Center. Dr. Anthony Chang is the co-founder and CEO, and under his leadership, BAMF has truly become the most advanced radio pharmacy, molecular imaging clinic, molecular therapy clinic, and clinical trials platform. They do this all under one roof. Now, Dr. Chang has 20 years of experience. He's been an educator. He has been a researcher, a scientist, and he's revolutionizing the treatment of cancer care as well as other non-cancer diseases like Alzheimer's and cardiovascular disease. When I walked into BAMF for the first time three years ago, I had goose bumps from head to toe. That place is doing some pretty radical stuff, and it's really transforming people's lives. In fact, Doug Meijer of Meijer stores was told, we have nothing left for you. Doug got this treatment, and he's here 10 years later. That's why he helped build BAMF Health out in West Michigan. BAMF is creating this new standard of care for cancer treatment, and the world is definitely taking notice. He's been widely recognized for his work, and he has received, I can't count the number of accolades and recognitions. This is what Dr. Chang had to say about New Day.

In order for a patient to have the best possible outcomes, they need both the best most advanced healthcare cancer treatment, and the financial and emotional resources that are necessary.

We need to remember we're not treating a disease, we're treating patients and who patient is a person. Very excited to learn when there's a dedicated foundation. Focus on this part of the cancer care to the patients, to their family, the humanity part.

What BAMF and New Day Foundation share in common is that we are both patient centric. We care about people first, and everything else falls into place after that.

Working together, we can actually set a great example to show the nation, show the world what's the right cancer care, what's the team should looks like and bring the best cancer care to everybody who need it.

Just want the patients to know that we are here, that we're working alongside your doctors to make sure that you have everything that you need to ultimately beat cancer.

That's Anthony Chang, and I love what he had to say in that video. He said, We're not treating a disease we're treating a patient. It's hard to remember sometimes when we're so focused in the medical space on our work and our research, etc. He also said this, we can set an example and show the world what the right cancer care team should look like. What he's saying is that we need those support services alongside of our medical care. He spoke at an event last year on behalf of New Day, which I don't have the video of, but I have this quote that he said. He said, Sometimes I have to argue that what New Day does may be more important than the treatment we give the patient. Now, I don't think for a minute that Dr. Chang doesn't think that their treatment is the most revolutionary thing in the world. But what I think he's trying to say is that if a patient doesn't have the financial and mental strength to battle cancer, the treatment is rendered useless. There's no point. The patient is not going to get there. They're not going to be able to be compliant, and they're going to ultimately lose their life. He recognizes that. By the way, this is their billboard that's been all over the state of Michigan, and that just another award for that campaign and we thought it was a really great campaign, and we're really proud to be partnered with them. In fact, they're going to be moving into Detroit sometime in the next two years in the Bedrock building downtown, where the jail site had originally been planned, and New Day Foundation is going to be receiving donated office space in the building. We're going to be right alongside of educators and med tech and innovative leaders, and we're going to be right there in the conversation so we're really excited about that for the next couple of years. Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the Economic Alliance for Michigan. It was an oncology symposium, had many, many stakeholders in the room, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Priority Health, General Motors, all the big pharmas, you name it. They were at the table. The symposium was there to facilitate discussions on cancer treatment in Michigan with an effort to adopt evidence based quality measures that was the goal of the symposium. For the first time, we got invited to the table I looked at this model that they had up on the screen, and I said, Wow they're looking for opinions and input from everyone, the healthcare providers, the doctors, the physician advisors, the payers, the employees, the HR executives. Everybody's being asked except the patients. I asked a simple question where are they represented in this model? What happened that day was really cool because it literally changed the course of the conversation that day and it changed the model. The future of the model now has patients and caregivers in the mix, and I'm so proud of that fact. Advocacy is so important, and being in those rooms means a lot. Each of us in this room has the power to make those influences in our own doctors' offices so I just had to share that with you. We know that cancer patients report high levels of financial stress during cancer treatment, and we know that the ones who do are twice as likely to die of cancer. That's a statistic that I hate sharing, but it's true. We see it time and again, multiple studies done by the NIH and others, there are white papers on this. You're twice as likely to die if you have financial stress. I want you to think about this. You have two patients. They're the same age. They have the same diagnosis. They have the same treatment plan, and they're given the same prognosis, but they have two very different outcomes. Why is that? It all comes down to social determinants of health.

This is a new area. When we first created New Day, we unknowingly waded into this field before it ever had a name. The social determinants of health, I'm sure you all know, there's such things as your residence, employment, education status, transportation, housing, access to nutrition. These are often more reliable predictors of successful cancer outcomes than the clinical care itself. These often unaddressed variables, as we've already said earlier, account for 80% of cancer patient outcomes. The work we do at New Day is laser is laser focused on that 80%. There we go. But we cannot do it alone. We dream of a day when the big players in the arena will come alongside us. The insurance companies, the pharmaceutical giants, government agencies, hospital systems, even corporate entities. We need them all. You heard Gina speak of the pillars of cancer care. In order to serve these most vulnerable Michigan families, we need everyone committed to serving not just the diagnostic and the clinical pillars we need them committed to all three. What are we asking really from everyone? Well, for us to confront a couple of basic facts. One in every two Americans will receive a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. One in two, half of all of us here. Another fact that needs confronting a medical diagnosis is the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in America. Medical care, especially cancer care is becoming a luxury, like a Paris vacation and we need to talk about that. While all of this may sound like it's too much to bear, I'm reminded of a passage from my Bible. Suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, produces character and character hope. Everyone experiences suffering and loss, I'm certain all of you have or are about to unfortunately, it's the nature of life. We're not alone in that, certainly since 2007, we have faced the same hardships and obstacles that every small startup faces. But we have persevered that indomitable spirit that emanates from that kitchen table so long ago now lives in all of those who walk alongside us today. The people who work in our offices, the volunteers, those who donate and support our mission, the golfers at the golf outing, the runners at the 5K, and most importantly, the families that we serve.

They all make up this amazing community that can be defined by that one big word, hope. We at New Day we are purveyors of hope. We shout it from the rooftops. We wear it on our clothing. We pedal it in the streets. There is hope. We're working hard every day so that every time a family in Michigan hears the words, you have cancer, the very next thing they hear is, but there's hope because there is a new day. I think back on my friend Ed, who rolled that freezer up my driveway. The days that followed when my children were fed and nourished by friends and strangers alike, I had been so wrong about those red coolers. They weren't symbols of death. They were bright red beacons of hope and love and community. Ed's simple act of kindness had reminded me that our superpower, as human beings, is our generosity to one another. He wasn't a guy delivering a freezer. He was a friend who made me feel known and loved and like I mattered. In fact, that generosity inspired some of the pieces that ultimately became this foundation. Today, some 18 years, through the work of New Day, we are essentially placing red coolers on hundreds of Michigan families every single year. We fill them up with gas cards and groceries and healthy food and mortgage and utility payments and emotional support. In short, we fill them up with hope. I'm fortunate to be able to be asked to speak on the topic of generosity quite often. I've come to learn it is a often misunderstood part of the human experience. We think of it in very one dimensional ways, assigning it mostly to the writing of big checks. However, generosity is more than a kind act. It is a fundamental expression of our humanity. Anthropologist, Margaret Mead was once asked, what are the first signs that a culture is becoming civilized? She didn't answer with clay pots or the use of tools or fire. She said, ''When we see a broken femur bone that has healed, we know that civilization is forming.'' In the wild, if you break your leg, you die. You can't hunt and gather for food. You can't protect yourself from predators. When they see evidence that a leg bone has been healed, that means someone has taken care of you. Someone has brought you food and water and provisions and protected you from the elements. When we take care of each other, we express our humanity. Another way generosity is often misunderstood is that it is outgoing one way street. An outgoing act of kindness for other people. Well, the Italians have a saying that I love. [FOREIGN] it means the echo of small kindnesses. They know something that we often forget, that kindness and generosity echoes back to us. Science backs up the Italians as well. Study after study proves that generosity benefits the giver. It strengthens relationship and fuels the progress of society. I know probably everyone in this room or many of you know that when we do acts of service to one another, we are rewarded with a flood of the happy hormones, oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine. We're chemically designed to be generous to one another. David McCullough Jr. said, ''Selflessness is the greatest thing you can do for yourself, '' and he was right. Each of you tonight are important members of the healthcare community. There are stakeholders here, thought leaders, academicians, students, and I'm quite certain there are patients among us. As leaders and participants of this community, we have the opportunity, some might say the responsibility to continue to explore new ways to live and to lead and to learn. New ways, in fact, to express our humanity to one another. Imagine with me for a moment. What would happen if we made generosity not an occasional gesture, but a core principle of our lives? What if businesses operated with generosity as a guiding philosophy? What if institutions of higher learning became incubators for generosity driven leadership? The possibilities are endless. We hope that this time we've spent together, we hope that some of the experiences and stories of our journey, we hope that it will encourage and inspire you to not just give generously, but that you will all begin to live generously. If you do, you will be amazed at the power of the echo of kindness. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]

Well, Michael and Gina, I've known you for, I don't know, I think I've been here eight or nine years, and you were amongst the first people that I got to know when I was learning about this area. You were doing amazing work then, and I have to tell you, this is just a beautiful presentation, and you've just knocked it right out of the park. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have questions for our speakers?

I don't actually have a question.

Sure.

Sorry, I get emotional. But I would just like to thank you, because as a person who contacts you and gets to tell somebody that they were awarded a gift, there's no other feeling that is as good as that.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Would you describe what your role is?

I'm a nurse navigator.

At Karmanos. Thank you very much. Questions or thoughts?

Hi. As a daughter who saw my dad suffer from prostate cancer and thankfully survived it and got his surgery done, we almost lost our house during that time because he was the main provider for our family. I wish I knew about this foundation, and I'm glad I know about this, and I'm very happy to go to the website and volunteer as much as I can from now on.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming and participating. Without you, our community, the concept of healthology would not exist. We are grateful for everyone's support, your participation, your enthusiasm. Now we ask you to go out into your own families and communities and to promote the health and well being of all. [APPLAUSE]