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The Foundation had only recently set up the Cancer CARE Fund to help cancer patients with transportation, medications, medical supplies and had conducted a survey of former cancer patients and discovered that their greatest needs were for transportation to and from cancer treatments, and for emotional support and help in communicating with their medical providers.

That gave Jean an idea. She offered to develop a conceptual framework for a free program of volunteer support and advocacy for cancer patients. The committee accepted her plan, and Care-Net was on its way.

The program began serving patients just four months after the hospital opened its Community Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Since then, Jean has been responsible for accepting patients into the program, interviewing and training volunteers, matching them with patients, giving them advice and helping them solve problems.

“Without Jean devoting so much of herself to it, I don’t know if the program would have gotten off the ground at such an early stage,” says Laura Kuzma, a Care-Net volunteer. “She is really terrific.”

Support and goodwill
Establishing the Care-Net program required not only the goodwill but also the active support of hospital administrators, physicians, nurses and others. Jean was still relatively new to the community and didn’t know many of the people whose support was crucial. Fortunately, she had Carole White to educate and advise her.

White is a former director of FirstHealth Hospice who had become director of the FirstHealth Hospice Foundation. Now, in addition to that job, she also serves as director of Donor Services for the Foundation of FirstHealth.

“Carole was my mentor, my guiding light through the early days,” Jean says, “and she has continued to be extremely helpful.”

According to White, Jean had the perfect combination of skills and personality to organize and run Care-Net.

“She is very organized and effective, and she quickly earned the respect of the Cancer Center staff,” White says. “She also has a kindness and sweetness about her that enables her to relate to people who are ill in a very gentle way that they respond to. That is really a blessing.”

Jean says that her husband was her main source of support as she organized and built the Care-Net program.

“There is no way I could have put as much time and effort into the program if Harold hadn’t been so supportive,” she says. “He has always been there when I needed him. The administration of the Cancer Center and the staff of the Foundation have also been tremendously supportive and encouraging. It has been a privilege and an honor to work with them.”

In November, Jean turned over the job of coordinating Care-Net to Rebecca Ainslie, director of FirstHealth Hospitality Services.

“A real strength of the program that Jean has built is the fact that it is very individualized,” Ainslie says. “There is not a set menu of things that volunteers do. The support they provide differs according to each patient’s need.”

Jean says she leaves the program in good hands and in good shape.

“It is well established, with a good organizational structure and routine of operation,” she says. “It was important to me to leave it in that state of affairs.”

While she is proud of the role she has played, Jean says the volunteers are mostly responsible for the good that the program does.

“They give so much of themselves and do many things that are beyond what anybody would expect of them,” she says. “They really have made a difference in the lives of so many people, and working with them has been a tremendously fulfilling experience.”

For information on the Care-Net program or the Cancer CARE Fund of the Moore Regional Hospital Foundation, please call Rebecca Ainslie at (910) 695-7507.