Founded by a survivor for survivors...

Why was this charity developed?

This organization began in Manhattan and was conceived and implemented by one grateful survivor in response to her experience with breast cancer and healing. Luana Halpern has enlisted the skills and services of those in the community who feel kindred to the cause and choose to use their time and skills for free to make a real difference. Read her story here. .

You Can Thrive!

was founded in 2005 and underwent a major expansion in the winter of 2008, integrating powerful survivor advocates like Jenna Glazer, Kristen Martinez and Jenny Issacs, PhD. into our wellness programs. We now have over 50 trained volunteers who offer a large array of program resources for better health and risk reduction-- all free to survivors in this area. With overwhelming support from the community we continue to move forward as a leader in quality of life programs utilizing health education to foster a holistic integrative approach to disease. Using these unique, never before available wellness programs to offer survivors so much more then mere survival, we guide survivors to Thrive!

New York State has the second highest rate of breast cancer in the country and the US has the highest rate of breast cancer in the world, therefore this area most likely has the highest concentration of survivors anywhere in the world, yet there were no affordable wellness resources, this was a gap that we felt needed to be filled. We have made integrative resources affordable for those diagnosed in New York, and plan a future where these helpful services and many other quality of life programs will be available to all survivors living in the United States and worldwide.

OUR FOCUS ON HEALING

You Can Thrive! Foundation supports quality of life programs that help alleviate unnecessary pain, disability, and psychosocial distress (ex: fear of death & recurrence) that often accompanies a diagnosis of cancer, and resurfaces after treatment or during extended living with disease. Acupuncture and other therapies are helpful in managing treatment related fatigue and enhancing a sense of wellbeing. By providing affordable access to the resources, and peer and community support needed to help people cope with their disease, You Can Thrive’s Integrative Wellness Center bridges a critical chasm in long-term survivorship plans for breast cancer survivors in NYC.

Our goal is to help:

  • Develop programs, information and strategies that provide the best integrative modalities to patients for those living with, through, and beyond cancer and interested in these therapies.
  • To help survivors implement a 'whole body' long-term approach that is affordable to all survivors as a supplement to medical care and hence, promote continued security in healing following diagnosis and/or treatment, at the stage when many survivors begin feeling more powerless.
  • To support survivors in accessing these and other educational resources as well as social and emotional support, so that they may become an educated partner in the healing process, and receive the peer and community support needed to cope with disease.
  • To reach out to the under-served populations that tend to fare worse when diagnosed

    • Many people experience great difficulty in making the transition from being ill and going through treatment, to thriving as a survivor, our organization offers security needed to facilitate this transition.