Every year, the Cancer Community Award, sponsored by AstraZeneca, presents an individual or organization with the Catalyst for Care Award.

This award celebrates those who are making a patient's experience as easy as possible during an extraordinarily difficult time.

In 2021, the nonprofit Unite for Her received the award for its work funding integrative therapies like acupuncture, massage, and nutrition support for women who've been diagnosed with breast or ovarian cancer.

As we prepared for this year's awards, we reconnected with Unite for Her's founder and CEO Sue Welden to hear more about what's happened since her organization received the award.

Sue Welden, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. I'm really excited to hear more about what you've been doing in the past year.

Thank you for having us, and it's been quite a year, and you guys really springboarded us on this wonderful, you know, nationwide expansion as well, so I'm happy to share.

Do you mind for people who don't know your story, just giving us a brief summary of your own cancer journey?

Yeah, absolutely. So in 2004, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was at a time where I had three small children and definitely thought they had the wrong girl, like a lot of people diagnosed.

There was a lot of side effects and symptoms that occur during cancer treatment. As a young woman, when you're those who came to therapy, you're forced into this menopause, so I was having hot flashes every hour on the hour.

I wanted to have more children, I was emotionally depressed, I was full of pain, neuropathy, you know, all the things that come along with treatment itself, and that's where I was learning how to treat the patient.

It was myself, and that whole woman, to get through, it was like changing for me, and it just allowed me to really dive in and educate myself about and to create a care, acupuncture, oncology massage, reiki, yoga, nutrition.

It's huge for me, food became my medicine, something I could control, these were things I could control, the diagnosis, the treatment I couldn't control any of that.

And that's really how it all came about. I remember being, you know, about a year out and feeling better, you know, six months of chemotherapy, but I don't miss anything.

I was a rough girl, lost a lot of weight, and I was just getting myself back, you know, and hair's coming back, and I went to this event, it was yoga and the steps didn't fill it up here.

And I saw this young woman out of the corner of my eye, and I can see her face, because she reminded me of myself, and her hair was gone, and the yellowish skin and the hollow eyes, and we all knew that feeling.

You know, I remember that feeling, that blank stare that I had when I couldn't believe it was me. So I went up to her, and I shared, and she asked how I looked so good, and what did I do?

And, you know, we just had this connection, and when I share with her about the acupuncture and the yoga and the patient, the whole food nutrition and plant-based diet, start crying.

She's like, oh, well, good for you. I can never afford all that. And that was my moment, you know, that was the moment where I was like, oh my gosh, shame on me.

You know, this is where we can make an impact. How can we get these types of therapies to everyone to get access? So when home, and it's in honey, all right, we're going to start on profit.

I'm not quite sure it looks like we're all going to work for free for a while, but I want to make sure that we can be able to give and fund and deliver these types of integrated services.

It started with 23 women in 2010, 2009, 2010, had to have a fundraiser, and now we're serving over to be 1500 all across the nation.

Let's say I am a woman who was just diagnosed with cancer, and I'm coming to you. I'm coming to unite for her. What would you tell me about how you might be able to help me? What I'm going to experience if I work with your nonprofit or benefit from your services?

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