Blood Cancer United Inc

B) patient & community services:an estimated 1.7 million people across the united states (us) are currently living with or are in remission from leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. The leukemia & lymphoma society (lls) offers an array of free, comprehensive resources to blood cancer patients, caregivers, families and friends of patients, advocates, healthcare professionals and the public. Lls is committed to providing the most accurate and up-to-date blood cancer information. Professional volunteer clinical advisors work with lls staff to review all of the information lls provides through healthcare professional and patient education programs, publications and the lls website. Support services are provided by professionals or rigorously trained peer volunteers. All resources are provided through a variety of media - print, online, by phone, and face-to-face in communities. A number of resources are available in spanish for patients, caregivers and healthcare professionals.financial assistanceour financial assistance programs aim to lessen the economic toll on patients and families to help patients afford life-saving treatments. To counter continually rising drug prices and alleviate the burdens felt by patients coping with blood cancer, lls provided 70,982 grants totaling over $173m in assistance awarded. The lion's share-over $158 million- awarded to supported patients' insurance premiums and treatment-related co-pay and co-insurance out of pocket costs through our co-pay assistance program.in keeping with our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, lls recognizes that need exists throughout all geographic regions and within all patient populations, including those traditionally underrepresented. Co-pay assistance programthe co-pay assistance program supports qualifying blood cancer patients meet their health insurance or medicare plan part b or d premiums or co- payment obligations related to treating their blood cancer diagnosis. Patients with prescription drug coverage, medicare beneficiaries under medicare part b and/or medicare part d, medicare supplementary health insurance or medicare advantage should check with lls to see if they meet eligibility requirements to receive financial support. Co-pay assistance is subject to funding availability by specific blood cancer diagnosis. In 2024, lls awarded 29,605 grants through its co-pay assistance program.susan lang pre car t-cell therapy travel assistance programlls awarded 425 grants each in the amount of $2,500 for treatment-related transportation and lodging costs for patients who are being evaluated to receive car t-cell therapy as either standard treatment or a clinical trial.susan lang pay-it-forward patient travel assistance programlls awarded 2,079 grants each in the amount of $500 for treatment-related transportation and lodging costs.urgent need programin partnership with moppie's love and charlie's fund, lls awarded 15,838 grants each in the amount of $500 for non-medical living expenses-including rent, utilities, and food.local financial assistance program lls awarded 4,339 grants each in the amount of $500 to cover non-medical living expenses-including rent, utilities, and food, etc. Patient aid program lls awarded one-time stipends of $100 to over 18,696 patients to help offset non-medical expenses. Scholarship for blood cancer survivorsin 2024, the lls scholarship for blood cancer survivors awarded 236 scholarships each up to $7,500 in tuition support for virtual or in-person vocational, two-year, orfour-year undergraduate education.

C) public health education:lls believes knowledge is power. As always, lls has offered their informational programs in virtual formats, continuing to provide vitally needed education and emotional support for those impacted by blood cancer. One-on-one education and supporttrained oncology information specialists in our information resource center (irc) provide patients and caregivers with compassionate, comprehensive, and tailored disease and treatment information, including referrals and links to appropriate educational resources and literature; psychosocial support information for any point in their treatment journey; referrals to relevant local, state and/or national resources for assistance; covid-19 related information and guidance; and financial resource information to cover costs of treatment, travel, urgent needs and more. Over 25,000 interactions between the irc and patients and caregivers took place last year.facilitating clinical trial accessthe lls clinical trial support center (ctsc) grew throughout the year as we increased our bi-lingual and pediatric expertise among the ctsc nurse navigators, and continued to expand the possibility of positive outcomes for patients by matching them to suitable clinical trials. Our nurse navigators assisted 1077 patients. Twenty percent of these patients entered a trial.outreach to underserved groupswe augmented efforts to expand access to lls services and resources by bolstering relations with community groups and leaders, notably in the black and latino communities, and increased our number of bilingual staff and volunteers. We also increased accessibility of our education programs to rural patients and families via our virtual offerings. Moreover, we expanded partnerships with additional affinity groups including: the national hispanic nurses association, national association of community health workers, the latino cancer institute, national black nurses association, alpha phi alpha.the lls myeloma link program, launched in 2017, continued to gain traction. We improved understanding of treatment options by providing important information to african americans, who are twice as likely to be diagnosed with multiple myeloma as caucasian americans. In 2024, lls reached almost 25,000 people through myeloma link education and outreach activities in 15 cities across the u.s.in 2024, the lls latino outreach pilot reached approximately 100,000 spanish-speaking community members through community programs across 5 major hispanic markets (including pr) and our partnership with entravision and prime time interviews with both univision and telemundo. Education and patient connectionsour virtual education programs provided both patients and families, as well as health care professionals, access to content including blood cancer conferences, local education programs, national webinars, videos, lectures, and podcasts.lls's highly viewed website continues to provide the most up to date blood cancer information including access to blogs, booklets, workbooks, fact sheets and more. In addition, 1,638 cancer patients were provided with personalized nutrition consultations by lls's registered dietitians. Our patient & community outreach team continued to bring patients together via online local support groups and chats. The patti robinson kaufmann first connection program matched 2,200 patients with trained volunteers facing the same disease.in addition, membership in lls community-our online social network- was 22,796, an increase of 9% over fiscal year 2023.

D) professional education:lls serves the educational needs of the medical and research community through a number of professional education symposia offered throughout the year. The educational department offers varying formats to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas on the newest developments in cancer research and treatment. Upcoming and archived ce/cme programs are available at www.lls.org/ce.in fy 2024:-lls provided 17 cme/ce-granting live educational programs, with 2,533 healthcare professionals in attendance. In addition 36 virtual lectures were presented with almost 65,000 participants.- over 22,000 patients and professionals participated in live education programs delivered virtually as well as delivered in person, locally and regionally.-there were over 214,000 page views for archived web programs, virtual lectures and videos and nearly 90,000 podcast downloads. Over 911,000 booklets and fact sheets were either downloaded or ordered in hard copy.