”Fighting Chance’s mission is to improve the quality of care for cancer patients on the Eastern End of Long Island by operating a free-of-charge counseling and resource center.“

OUR STORY

Fighting Chance is America’s oldest and largest free cancer counseling center that operates on a regional basis, in our case the Eastern End of Long Island, which is about 600 square miles and largely semi-rural.

Because of our regional service model, we can (and do) have a walk-in office in Sag Harbor where patients will find “boots on the ground.” That means licensed health care professionals – including a clinical psychologist and oncology social workers – who can meet with the patient in person.

In person counseling is the “gold standard” when helping a newly-diagnosed cancer patient cope with the negative psychological effects of cancer that include hyper-anxiety, depression, insecurity, and sleeplessness. In-person counseling is better, by far, than telephone calls, email counseling, chat rooms, or the use of two-way videos.

As of 2019, Fighting Chance has added a second patient counseling office within the Stony Brook Southampton Hospital Phillips Family Cancer Center to facilitate the ongoing need for our free cancer counseling services.

Our 501(c)3 charity sees hundreds of newly diagnosed cancer patients each year. We attribute our success to offering free-of-charge gold standard in-person counseling, providing a counseling team with over 75 years of experience navigating the cancer journey, thus eliminating most of the paperwork and red tape patients choke on in the healthcare system.