Surviving Survivorship

It’s time once again to break out the walking shoes for another charitable week of shopping. This year, however, you’ll not only be able to shop in KC for a good cause but also at many shopping centers across the country.

Last year, Barbara Unell, founder and executive director of Back in the Swing, along with her husband, Bob, marketing director, received a call from the manager at Yorktown Center in Chicago, who wanted to replicate this shopping experience. Originally from the Kansas City area, she knew the benefits involved with the retail therapy program, so she called on StoreFinancial, an international payment systems processor and program manager of prepaid card programs, for help. Just months later, Yorktown Center was holding its own event, selling gift cards (not discount cards) with the Back  in the Swing logo and promoting breast cancer awareness and survivorship.

Headquartered in Overland Park, StoreFinancial has more than 500 clients around the world. After seeing the success at Yorktown Center, they took the retail therapy idea to other shopping center clients to see if they’d be interested — this year, 26 clients outside the Kansas City area are participating in this national event, which takes place during the same week, October 11-17, but the Kansas City area will remain the flagship city for Back in the Swing Retail Therapy.

“We wanted to do the right thing and help out the cause,” says Mark Lighthall, account manager for StoreFinancial. “There are a lot of people out there who have personal ties to cancer itself and this is a way [shopping centers] can help them out and their community at the same time.”

“Because it’s a local organization, we’re excited to use our card as a vehicle to spread awareness about this event,” adds Brynn White, account manager for Store Financial. “It provides a boost in sales for the shopping center and promotes a great cause. We feel like it’s going to grow each year and look forward to the feedback.”

This year, Back in the Swing has more than 40 new shopping centers around the country participating in the week’s  festivities. Some of those centers include Boulevard Mall in Amherst, N.Y.; The Pike in Long Beach, Calif.; and Charleston Town Center in Charleston, W. Va., yet none of these cities compare to ours, with more than 42 shopping centers (about 800 stores) participating. “Retail therapy has become a proven way to provide joyful and powerful education, awareness and fundraising benefits for breast cancer survivors and support the economic growth of communities all through Back in the Swing,” Bob says.

The money raised from the sales of retail therapy discount cards will continue to be donated to local survivorship centers, programs and research, and the money raised from other centers across America will support the development of new online medical training classes for those  in the medical field interested in administering post-treatment care.

A survey taken by members of the Oncology Nursing Society (ONS) across the U.S. found that 83 percent of oncology nurses think survivorship care is an essential part of the continuum of cancer care, but only 13 percent reported that they are adequately trained to provide this type of health care to the community. To make survivorship health care the standard for every breast cancer survivor, Back in the Swing provided a grant to the Breast Cancer Survivorship Center at the University of Kansas Cancer Center, which will lead the development of a series of online training modules for nurses and health practitioners to provide continuing educational credits and teach them how to administer post-treatment care — with hope of extending the reach of survivorship care.

People continually ask how the KC market created such a health care movement. Jennifer Klemp, PhD, MPH, tells them it’s by educating oncology nurses and people associated within oncology and related fields about how to integrate survivorship care into any practice setting. “We’re developing tools to use with every setting; we want people to know [survivorship/post-treatment care/centers] are not a luxury but a regular part of continuing cancer care,” says Klemp, assistant professor and manager of the Breast Cancer Survivorship Center at the University of Kansas Medical Center. A side note, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1994 and is doing well. They take time out each year to help sell the discount cards while also getting in a little shopping of their own.

But the movement doesn’t stop here. A year ago, a select group of advocates decided to take things to the federal level, with the goal of making survivorship “the law of the land,” as Bob explains. They met with Rep. Dennis Moore (Third District, Kansas) about composing legislation that will fund research, education and grants for integrative cancer survivorship health care. Barbara helped the congressman’s legislative assistant draft a bill, “The Quality Cancer Care for Life Act,” which has already received 30 co-sponsor signatures and made its way into the House of Representatives.

“Health care and retail therapy are the two main components to Back in the Swing,” Bob says, “and I think we found a very cool way to combine the two.”