The Ellie Fund: Helping Local Breast Cancer Patients

The Ellie fund has recently launched a new program- the “Care for the Caregiver” program is a local initiative to help patients with breast cancer with some of their treatment-related expenses. Eligible patients may receive reimbursement for transportation, housecleaning, child-care or pet-care expenses up to an individually determined financial cap. The fund is investigating the possibility of adding home-delivery of groceries to this list.

There is no income or asset limit for eligibility. The primary eligibility criteria is a breast cancer diagnosis. The fund does request that social workers asses the patient to ensure that the need for financial assistance is due to breast cancer rather than other pre-existing problems before referring.

This program is piloting their services with the MGH and some other Harvard-affiliated teaching facilities. At this time they have not yet opened their program to other common cancer referral sources (e.g., ACS, the Wellness community). Logistics are also being ironed-out. They hope to contract with Town Taxi to provide their own temporary vouchers. For housecleaning and child-care, they do not make referrals. The expectation is that the patient will find their own resource and the fund would then reimburse the patient.

For more information, or to refer a patient, please contact Julie Perry at (781) 449-0100 or see http://www.elliefund.org.

03/2005