On Sunday, ASTRO awarded this year’s recipients, Boston Medical Center Corporation and Love Bus, with Survivor Circle Grants of $12,500 each. Boston Medical Center Corporation is the largest safety net hospital in New England, providing care for patients who are disproportionately impacted by systemic inequities. Love Bus is a nonprofit based in Amesbury, Massachusetts, that provides integrative therapies to children with cancer and their family members throughout New England annually.
Boston Medical Center Corporation
Boston Medical Center Corporation is the largest safety net hospital in New England, and runs out of our host city, Boston, providing care for patients who are disproportionately impacted by systemic inequities. They lower barriers to care through their Cancer Center Patient Navigation Program, helping patients stay in treatment and achieve better outcomes. The THRIVE screening tool is identifying these needs earlier than ever, and the Survivor Circle Grant will allow them to act on these needs in real time, ensuring that the most vulnerable patients can access and complete their cancer treatment without interruption.
Boston Medical Center Corporation plans to use grant funds to directly support patients with cancer undergoing radiation therapy, a population requiring frequent visits over multiple weeks. Funds will be used for immediate support services, including transportation, grocery gift cards, support for childcare, and emergency assistance for basic expenses. This funding will ensure that patients are not forced to choose between attending treatment and meeting basic needs like food, childcare, or housing stability.
Priya Murali, Senior Foundation Relations Officer, described the Grant’s impact: “We are deeply grateful to ASTRO… for recognizing the importance of supporting patients beyond their medical treatment. We see every day how something as simple as a ride to an appointment or help with an unexpected expense can make an enormous difference for someone going through cancer treatment. This grant gives us the opportunity to ease some of those burdens for our patients and their families, so they can focus more of their energy on their health and healing. We are incredibly thankful for the opportunity to provide that extra layer of support when our patients need it most.”
Love Bus
Based in Amesbury, Massachusetts, Love Bus provides free integrative therapies to nearly 500 children with cancer and their family members throughout New England annually. This special nonprofit covers a range of services that help children with cancer feel better, sometimes in the form of a traditional integrative therapy (e.g., massage, yoga, acupuncture, therapeutic horseback riding), and other times, the activity is a complementary one to enhance quality of life and promote childhood joy (e.g., gymnastics, swimming, martial arts).
Love Bus plans to use the Survivor Circle funds directly toward integrative therapy sessions for pediatric and young adult cancer patients with a dedicated focus on expanding access for families who face the greatest barriers to care.
Specifically, Love Bus intends to apply this funding to extend their reach to radiation therapy patients. Integrative therapies have helped manage treatment side effects including fatigue, anxiety and pain. This grant will allow Love Bus to deepen their capacity to serve patients — scheduling sessions around appointments and coordinating directly with radiation oncology teams to ensure seamless support. Rebecca, current board member and former program participant, shared: "Imagine your hand is in a pot of boiling water. Now imagine someone gives you permission to lift it out — even just for an hour. You're still hurting. But for that hour, you can breathe again. And moments like that don't just help — they heal."
A portion of this funding will also support continued outreach efforts and referral partnerships with hospital social work departments that serve high volumes of patients from low-income households, communities of color, and non-English-speaking families.
Love Bus also intends to use a portion of funds to sustain critical sibling and caregiver support. Through Sajni's Siblings and Ilene's Caregivers, Love Bus widens the circle of care to the siblings and caregivers who too often go without support. This funding will help grow these programs, which serve populations that are systematically underserved. The Survivor Circle grant can fund an estimated 300 integrative therapy sessions for an expected 30 children with cancer, young adult survivors, siblings and caregivers — 300 opportunities to ease the burden of a cancer journey.
Jackie Walker, Executive Director of Love Bus, shared: "Being chosen for this year's Survivor Circle grant means so much more to us than dollars — it means that a science- and radiation treatment-centered organization like ASTRO sees and values the healing that happens outside the treatment room too. For the children and young adults we serve, integrative therapies aren't a luxury — they're often the one hour in a week where they get to feel like a kid again instead of a patient. Every session helps a family feel less alone on one of the hardest roads there is."
Learn more about Love Bus.
The New England region will certainly benefit from the works of these two remarkable organizations and ASTRO is delighted to grant these funds to deepen their impact.
Survivor Circle was created in 2003 to honor cancer survivors by recognizing organizations that provide support. Since the start of the program, ASTRO has awarded over $550,000 thanks in large part to the generous support of our exhibitors, 100% of which has gone to grant recipients.
Published on: September 30, 2026
