Episode Transcript
Thanks to decades of advances in early detection and innovations in treatment, more patients are surviving cancer than ever before. But when cancer treatment ends, their journey to health is just beginning. An increasing number of patients are navigating life after cancer and the long-term physical and emotional consequences of their treatment. Research shows that strategies such as nutrition support, stress management, and lifestyle change can do more than just support conventional care efficacy. They can also transform the recovery process. How can the functional medicine approach help clinicians address the hidden long-term effects of cancer therapy and empower patients on their survivorship journey?
We spend a lot of attention afterwards to, now after the chemo's done, what's going on with the immune system? Are the lymphocytes in good shape? Are you making antibodies? We're particularly interested in a cell called the natural killer cell, which is very important for cancer prevention. And there are specific supplements that can be used. Most of the time, there's a variety of mushroom supplements that can help the immune system recover, but it takes some time.
I'm director of medical education, Dr. Kelechi Uduhihiri. And on this episode of Pathways to Well-Being, we welcome AIC 2026 presenter, Dr. John Neely to discuss his experiences in integrating functional medicine principles into oncology care and how it can help cancer survivors increase their health span. Welcome to the show, John.
Great. Thanks so much. Thanks for welcoming me. I'm really looking forward to AIC this year. I think what you'll find when I talk about my experience with cancer care, it really applies to almost any kind of patient that has a struggle and is recovering. So looking forward to it.
Yes, absolutely. Well, first, it's so great to see you again. And I'm looking forward to AIC because I get to see you in person and learn more from you. And so let's start by talking a bit about your background. How did you become interested in functional medicine, integrative medicine?
Yeah, well, it's a bit of a journey. When I went to medical school, I had an advantage in that the school I went to had a focus on primary care, family medicine, community medicine, and things like that. So I had a background. But when I went through school, I became very interested in pediatrics. And then when I went to the University of Minnesota for my training, I got very interested in oncology and immunology and did my training there.
I ended up doing some research at another institution with chemotherapy resistance and things like that. And ended up back in Hershey where I did my training to be the chief of the division of pediatric oncology, which I did in the mainstream way for about 20 years. Then I had, I guess I would say an epiphany. I started to become interested in other aspects of care for people because I knew
we were doing in pediatrics a wonderful job with increasing the cure rate of children with cancer, but it came at a cost. There were a lot of side effects. There were a lot of family stresses that happened. And I started to look at other things to do. And I went to actually went to a review course for integrative medicine. So that was everything, not just functional medicine, but thanks to Patrick Hannaway who gave a talk there,
I became very interested in functional medicine, signed up shortly thereafter for AFMCP, and then went on to all the advanced practice modules, and then began to apply that first to my practice in pediatrics. But I also had a lot of experience working with people in family medicine, women's health, and other areas. And I found that the wonderful Matrix that we have, which really changed the way I looked at
at how you care for patients could be looked at in some new ways that would emphasize things that were important for the patients that I saw with a lot of problems. And that's kind of what my talk is going to be about, my experience with that.
Wow, that's amazing. So we're going to unpack that. You gave me a lot there. And I'm definitely looking forward to hearing more about the Matrix from your perspective. And we'll definitely dive into that here as well. So you've had a pretty storied career, you know, first in pediatrics, then subspecialty. Then you mentioned this epiphany that epiphany that you had that, you know, increased your awareness about integrative and functional medicine. so basically that
journey has involved bringing functional medicine principles into conventional and large scale healthcare settings like Hershey. How have you integrated these principles in these settings and what results have you seen?
Well, it's such an important thing. I find that once people, know, people tend to think, for instance, in standard medicine, when you do review of systems, which is a standard thing we all do with patients, it's things like ear, nose and throat, then cardiovascular. And it never really blended together that all those things affect each other in a systems way. So the concept of...
the functional systems that we use in functional medicine just made a lot of sense. So that's what I ended up applying. And I would say my first experience, other than going to a lot of conferences and things, my first experience was through the generosity of the chair of family medicine where I am. And he said, you know, this should be applied to
everyday patients in family medicine, and he invited me to start a program there. That was interesting from a system standpoint, because I do work in a large healthcare system, and there were instantly some barriers. Now, this is about 20 years ago, so we're talking about things have changed quite a bit. But the barriers were that, first of all, people didn't exactly know what to do regarding
how to label what I was doing and how to bill for it. And in many cases in any kind of a business system, if you don't generate revenue, it's a problem. So one of the first barriers I came across was the way we structured our insurance agreements. If they ever heard the word integrative or functional, they would not pay. They just said, that's a side. And we ended up kind of having a cash practice.
within a healthcare system which just did not work. Because we feel, not only did we feel an obligation to work with the insurance companies, but we felt an obligation to treat any patient regardless of their ability to pay to help them get healthier. And so after, I don't know, three, four years, it just kind of fell through because nobody knew what to do with a functional medicine system at that point.
That is so interesting because, I think that is still some of the challenges today, even though I know that's getting better and there are more insurance-based practices that can implement functional and integrative care into their practice. So it's interesting that this is still what we are dealing with. How have you worked with conventional peers?
to incorporate more lifestyle and functional medicine practices. I know there were some barriers on the insurance side and making it work, but with your peers in general, how has that process or that transition been for you?
Well, I think it was helped in some degree because I've been at this system, healthcare system for a while. so I've made friends with a lot of people. So I think an important caveat is if you are out there in the community and want to apply this to a healthcare system, it's important to develop friends and to develop trust among everybody. The first thing that I found was oftentimes my colleagues would have a patient that had
it for them a particularly difficult thing. It may be that the nutritionally they were not doing well. They could need a lot of other support. And frankly, they didn't have time to do that when they were in the middle of of managing conventional chemotherapy or conventional medications in other ways. So they'd call me in to say, "what can you do to help?" And then when I did a functional medicine approach, which for me is the most time paying attention to the gut.
You know, we all know that proper nutrition, proper gut health is important. And plus also looking at how do we maintain a good immune system and a detoxification system. My colleagues saw that their patients not only were getting healthier and happy, but they also were getting happier. You know, they felt like they had some control over their life in a very difficult situation.
And the fact that I was able to have the time to talk to them and look at things differently was a big help.
That's amazing. Absolutely. I love that you say that. I love how you started that answer. You first you had to build trust. You built those relationships that were so vital for your colleagues to trust you with their patients, right? And then you were able to apply the functional medicine principles to actually, for them to even see that their patients were getting better. And so you found that supporting patients during your treatment,
using functional medicine principles was very beneficial. That is what I'm hearing.
Correct.
What kinds of things did you find were helpful in that process?
It depended a lot on the situation I was in and the individual patient. But if you all pull out your functional medicine Matrix, you all know it pretty well. But the one area that always seemed to be not that well-defined was that little circle about mind, body, and spiritual, and all those kind of things. And with a model that I've been working on, it emphasizes
where the individual is in their thought process and their maturity about their own health or their spirituality, a whole bunch of things. But we also need to realize, which I think you all do, that there's a whole family and community and government system that impinges upon their thought process about where health is. So oftentimes, I spend a fair bit of time, not only, of course, in pediatrics, it's usually children.
young adults, but we spend a lot of time with the families and sit down and have them understand through listening uh where they are in this person's health journey and their own family's health journey. And within acknowledging that.
repeating back, like, you know, the Go-to-it thing that we always talk about in functional medicine. You kind of repeat back the story. You have them realize you're listening to what they're saying. You develop trust. And, you know, it was not at all unusual for a family to stop me a minute into listening and they say, "You're the first doctor that ever listened to me." That's a very common thing. So the skills we learn in functional medicine about
listening to the patient's story, repeating it back, making sure you have it right is what develops trust. And then after that, you can go on and talk about, well, what are your specific concerns? How can we address it? And then we go on with a plan.
Wow, that is so impactful, you know? And I'm hearing a repetitive theme here, John, from you, you know? You're building trust with your institutions, you're building trust with your colleagues, and now you're also taking that same skill set that is just foundational to functional medicine and building trust with the patient. So can you share a case vignette? I know you shared one with me that I was really good. Share with our listeners that case vignette or patient story that might illustrate
this approach of that mind-body spirit.
Right, well, I think the one that we probably talked about was this family from a church community that we have in our area. called the Amish community. And some of you live near them, but they're very interesting, very honest people. But they have their views, their religious experiences. They also have views about what healing is. And I had a situation
where a little two-year-old had a mass that had developed that was visible to us. And it was at another hospital. And it turned out to be an unusual but highly treatable cancer in a young woman, child. And when they came to us, we knew what it was. And we also knew how to treat it with basically almost 100 % cure rate.
And they weren't interested. They wanted to do natural treatments. There was one marker for tumor growth that was done at the other hospital, which was sky high. It should be zero. It was like 3,000. And when we did it, it was 2,800. So they thought, ah, it's getting better already. But it really wasn't. That was margin of error for the labs. But they basically
wanted to take the child home and do natural treatments. The regular team called me and what they wanted to do was turn this family over to children and youth because they felt this was neglect of a child. And I said, that is going to be the worst thing you can do because the whole community will react to that. Let me talk to the family. So they went home.
But actually one evening I went out to their house, which is always an experience to go to a house that has no electricity, no TVs, no nothing. It's just very quiet. But I went in and sat with the family. And in these households, it's usually the children, the parents, and the grandparents that all live in one place. So they all gathered around as we talked. Now, a two-year-old knows no English in these families. And I...
speak some German and I also know some Pennsylvania Dutch phrases. So I started to talk to the child, even though she was two. I actually sang the Eensy Weetsy Spider song in German to her. as I was chatting with the parents, you know, about how things were going, the little girl came over with a doll, homemade doll, and gave it to me and sat on my lap. So
I knew right away that there's a sign that I was building trust, not just with the child, but also the parents could see that I was building this trust. So we talked about the treatment that we might do. And I oftentimes orchestrate this in terms of natural medicines. For example, it's a very common chemotherapy for lots of tumors, particularly in children, it's called Vin-Christine.
that is from the periwinkle plant. They, nine times out of 10, have the periwinkle growing in their garden. So we talk about how here's a chemotherapy that was derived from a natural plant. And the same as a lot of our other therapies can be looked on as coming from natural, but then being purified. And that kind of...
hit a link with them about, okay, well, there's a connection between natural and what we currently do. And then we talked about, well, what have they heard about treatments? What kind of herbal things or what kind of other supplements are they using and thinking of using? And I said, look, let's work together. We'll have you use the supplements. If I think there's one that's a problem, I'll let you know. But to get you through treatment, let's work together with therapy we know works plus natural medicines that can help your child stay healthy.
And then after the treatment is done, we're going to work on rebuilding the body. Two years old, they do a pretty good job of healing themselves. But you know, you want to pay attention to the same things. How's their gut doing? What's going on with the immune system? Are we doing everything we can to help the body detoxify and then so she can grow up and have a normal life? And we encourage them that from the treatments we know, there's every expectation she will be cured, grow up.
get married if that happens and then have children. So we reassured them that she can have a normal life.
That's beautiful. Wow. That's amazing because again, here you are, you know, we have the, the, the, the traditional way we had the reactive approach of going into the home, extracting the child from what they know. But you again, you know, put on your, would say your functional medicine hat and thinking more about the community that the child lives in and grows within and how would that affect the care of the child? You know, you went in and you've built that relationship.
Again, it's about building relationships and building trust. Because again, that is the healing is what I'm hearing, right? That is the healing is having people understand you, you understand them.
Right. Well, and you know, this comes down from a, when I look at it from a functional medicine standpoint, just interaction of the individual and the individual family with the community. These bring up ethical questions. You know, there may be situations where a child should be
introduced to children and youth so that they can be helped in having a child receive the proper care. But that's not the way of this community. And so you need to work with the ethics of that community and have it fit in with the rest of the ethics in the overall community. It can be very difficult at times.
And this brings me to something you mentioned earlier about existential philosophy. I know that you use a version, and you've already mentioned so, of the functional medicine Matrix that integrates as existential philosophy. How does this four quadrant functional medicine Matrix that you shared change the way you understand a patient's specific health goals compared to maybe the traditional oncology follow-up?
Yeah, without getting into the weeds too too much. Yeah, and I will talk about this more in my talk. But in my journey, after I decided I wanted to do more things than just standard medicine, one of the things that I looked at was that area of wellness that we know about but have a hard time measuring. Like, what is consciousness? How does that come about?
Give away too much, just a little bit.
deal with stresses, without medication, with other things. And I spent a year in a very helpful course on dialogue and how to have difficult conversations. And one of the people that was presented was a modern day philosopher. you can look him up. His name is Ken Wilber. He is somewhat complicated in that he is, I would say he's a modern existentialist.
And he broke down the human existence into what he called four quadrants for the the top two. You know, if you drew a square and then divide it into four, that's the four quadrants. If you look at the top part, the physical measurable part of a person is where we are in medicine. You know, you do physical exams, you do laboratory experiments, you know, or laboratory testing. You do X rays, anything that you can actually physically measure. On the other side is those
invisible parts of a person that makes a person a person. It may be the realm of psychiatry or psychology, but this is how do people develop psychologically? What are their spiritual views? What are their moral and ethical views? And that's all the top two quadrants. The bottom quadrants are the environment within which somebody lives. And so if we have our physical body, we're living in a physical environment.
And that environment provides nutrients, has pathogens, has all kind of things that you're exposed to, toxins. And the interface between that upper level of the individual and the lower level of the environment is so important from a functional medicine standpoint. It's how we get food in, we protect and repair ourselves, how do we detoxify ourselves. But on the other side,
with the individual that has all the psychological, spiritual, ethical issues, there's a whole community that can be, in the case of what I talked about, it could be the family and the community views about religion, for example. And the church community for the Amish is so tight-knit and important. There are a community called Anabaptists. They do not believe in baptism on
until an individual is willing to devote themselves to their religion and to their community. And it's important to understand the interaction of the community with the individual. And on top of that, here's a community that has to live within the overall United States sets of laws. And the Amish are very law abiding. They are participants in our community. They volunteer at the fire companies and all of that. But they have their own individual views
that we have to take into account and respect and try to have them navigate. So those are the four quadrants, the individual person's physical and unmeasurable things, and then the community's physical, and then the non-physical parts. So we'll talk more about how that interface happens.
That's great. I'm looking forward to it because that sounds fascinating. And it's so true because we don't live in a vacuum, right? We live within the context of where we work, where we, you the environment, you know, our nutrition, our genetics too, right? So there's so many facets of our journey through this earth school. So that brings me to the thought that survivorship, cancer survivorship is as much a mental and a spiritual journey as a physical one.
How does a strong therapeutic partnership help address the fear of recurrence and the emotional needs of the patient from based on your experience?
Yeah, well, you know, it's it's funny when when I taught, I still do some teaching in medical school. We have a Department of Humanities actually in our school. And so we do a lot of work with ethics and all the things we just talked about. there was always the story of the myth of the sword of Damocles. And if you remember mythology, Damocles had a sword hung over him on a string and was ready to drop at any moment.
and he had to live with that. Well, many patients after they get done with cancer feel that sword, like, okay, they're cured, but is it gonna come back? now kids, little kids, don't particularly care about that because they just wanna go on with their life and the parents are worried about it. So we talk to the parents about, well, what are we gonna do? And it almost always comes down to lifestyle issues. We gotta work on.
proper food, stop the sugary breakfasts and have something wholesome. Work on vegetables and fruits that help detoxify, all those kind of things. So the parents think about it, but I tell you where I saw it the most was when I worked for about five years in women's health. It was a wonderful experience because I was asked to join the women's health group at the medical center from a functional medicine standpoint.
And these were women of all ages who either were at risk for breast cancer or had been through the journey of breast cancer. And they were immensely interested in what can I do to keep breast cancer at bay, help maybe to help me through the therapy, but also to prevent it from either happening in the beginning or prevent it from coming back. So we have a lot of talk about, you know,
It gets a little bit biochemical from their standpoint, but they're very interested. And when you look at a simplified version of the steroid pathways, for instance, they begin to understand how certain foods, potentially certain supplements, can direct the metabolism of estrogens in a healthy way versus an unhealthy way. So that was a wonderful experience that I had for that five years.
That's amazing. And it's so important to understand how nutrition really impacts the care, right? During chemo and post-chemo and beyond. So that brings me to my next question. Looking at the latest research in this area, where do you see the biggest opportunity for conventional and functional medicine to finally close the gap in oncology care?
In a way it comes down to trust again, sorry to say, but my experience with my particular group is develop a respect for each other. I certainly do not dis conventional chemotherapy. I know there are people that might, but I have seen the success and I've seen it on the adult side too. And I start to think about
Back to the circle.
some of my relatives that went through some pretty extensive treatments and now the treatments are better. It's not that they're easy, but they're better. And I think where I see this happening is where you develop a respectful partnership between kind of the standard chemotherapy, radiation therapy things that is added to and maybe tempered by what we see in functional medicine.
And it works both ways. I mean, for example, we can do a lot to help a patient detoxify and talk about, there's there's all kind of like genomic testing out there to look at nutritional pathways. And that's helpful. But on the other hand, you don't want to do something that is going to increase the metabolism of chemotherapy and then reduce its effectiveness. So a lot of our strategies is actually sitting down with our colleagues and saying, OK, how do we
How do we time this? We want your therapy to be proper and effective, but we also, we always say kind of like clean up after the party. We want to make sure after the chemo and stuff is done, what can we do to enhance healing very quickly and particularly after therapy is done? And I tell you, they are all interested in their patients, number one, being cured, and number two, being cured with the least toxicity so that they live
a good life afterwards. And that's how I see the two working together. And it's a natural fit.
Yeah, absolutely. It's a collaboration. It's a partnership. It's not one or the other. It's both can complement each other, right? And it has to because, you know, we don't want to stop advancement in cancer research and all the great therapeutics that are coming, you know, from in that area. But we also know that there's a big role for integrative and functional medicine to play during the process and then of course beyond it. So.
Again, I'm hearing trust.
Well, you know, there and there are other things we have some specific interests because we realize that nutrition is such an important role that we actually are actively looking for another nutritionist that has a functional medicine bent because, you know, I can do it, but but somebody that's trained in it is much better at it. We also have somebody who is an exercise physiologist that has joined our group and we are studying
What is the effect of regular exercise and all of that in somebody's response to chemotherapy and recovery? And we do the other things. We have people with meditation and looking at heart rate variability. So there's a variety of things that I think we hear about all the time at IFM that can be brought into a practice.
You know, I guess I'm fortunate from the cancer standpoint in that I was in that field for a long time. So I have a relationship. But I would encourage if somebody has an interest in dealing with cancer patients is to go make friends with some of the oncologists and and and in particular, see what the landscape is for administration. Because frankly, if you don't have somebody in administration that's going to see the light on this, it's a rough way to go.
Wow, you just give me so much there to unpack. I hear that, you know, number one, collaboration. Number two, it's really a collaborative team approach as well. You know, you have folks like yourself in functional integrative medicine. You have the nutritionists. You have the health coach, the oncologist, of course. Who else do you think is really vital in that collaborative team for that patient?
Well, I mean, I know what we do in children. It's maybe a little different than adults, but we have a whole program of what's called Child Life. it would be interesting to have that brought up in a functional medicine point of view, because you know what? Five-year-old child views things differently than a 15-year-old young adult. And so we use Child Life. It's not just
play therapy, as people call it. It's actually, oftentimes, the greatest fears that a child has gets directed to the child life person, not me as the doctor. They're comfortable with the child life person. And we hear about it because we're working as a team. There are typical social service people, most of them, depending on where they are, are working on things like how do you
transition out into the community and a lot of nuts and bolts things. But I think there's a role for psychological social work, I guess I would say, where they could pay some attention to that part of the Matrix and those parts of the quadrant where, well, where does the individual stand in their disease and their thoughts and how is it relating to the family? And what are the stumbling blocks and how can we make it better? Those are the main things I see.
that are being applied for children for sure. And I know that maybe not so much child life, but everything else through the adult world too.
Yeah, that's really important because there are so many players that make this really work, right? I think gone are the days where we can think it's going to be just, you need more than your, you need the oncologists, obviously they have the expertise, they have the treatment, but bringing the whole team together, bringing a collaborative team together is what I'm hearing is what's made your program. And I believe at Hershey Correct made it very, very successful.
And having buy-in from administration is also important. So it's like a full spectrum.
No, I was just thinking that another aspect that's come up in several of the places that I've worked are, I guess we at one time called it the grateful patient. But I think oftentimes some of the things that we do are hard to pay for through the standard insurance system. So philanthropy is very important. If you have somebody that can donate a
some money, you might be able to hire the extra nutritionists, you know, that maybe the hospital feels they can't afford, but you can help pay for it, or other aspects like that. we're very fortunate where we are in pediatric oncology at Hershey. We have a pretty large philanthropic group that not only supports patient care, but also helps us do research. They're the ones that hired the exercise physiologist and a nutritionist
and we hope a second nutritionist. So keeping an eye open for philanthropy and particularly a grateful patient that might be able to help is important.
That's awesome. I really appreciate, you know, the fact that you emphasize the importance of this collaborative care team for the patient. That it's really almost like it takes a village to really support, you know, patients going through chemo, patients going, you know, post-chemo. And one thing I did want us to touch on that I don't think we've gotten to yet is, you know, the impact of chemotherapy on the gut. How do you approach restoring
the gut microbiome immune axis?
Yeah, it's a it's a difficult thing because for one thing, a lot of chemotherapy is derived from very similar chemicals that antibiotics are derived from. So it oftentimes just by itself does a number on the gut microbiome.
It's very complicated. There is a stress to the mucosa of the gut, you have so-called leaky gut and a difficulty of absorbing the right things or absorbing things that has no business being absorbed where you can get sepsis from absorbing bad bacteria. So paying attention to the gut is very important and sometimes difficult to do. There's also out there the concerns about
probiotics that rears its head every once in a while because when the gut mucosa is damaged and somebody is taking intensive probiotics, is some reports that it can cross the intestinal barrier and cause sepsis. But on the other hand, people will say, well, don't take probiotics, but yogurt's okay. I I mean, it's like, really? I I mean, what's the difference in a way? So I think there's a lot we really don't know.
about it, but there's so many things that affect the microbiome and there's studies that are coming along regarding it. Mean, for example, just living in the hospital for, know, kids oftentimes live there for two weeks. Well, their environment has changed, their food supply has changed, and I guarantee you their microbiome has changed. And then they're on antibiotics quite often. So it can be a mess.
Oftentimes the best thing to do is to get them home and eating foods that they were eating in their own household so they get their own natural microbiome back. So we spend, would say we are number one criteria is to make sure either through nutrition or through some supplements that we're providing the molecules that will help the lining of the gut repair itself. And there's a variety of supplements out there that people know about that can help with that.
But we take care of that. We also talk about healthy sources of probiotics and really important prebiotics. People are finally catching on that all these soluble fibers and prebiotics really is what makes a gut healthy. And so we spend a lot of time on that. And particularly after the chemo is done and the gut is starting to heal, then we start to pay a lot of attention to what can we do.
from a probiotic prebiotic standpoint to get the gut back and being healthy.
This is a really hot topic, as you know. Are there any other dietary approaches or nutrients that you recommend for cancer patients? Because I know our listeners want to know from the John Neely.
Right. Well, you know, I when I look at my four quadrant model, the to me, the three most important parts of the functional medicine Matrix is is how do you digest and assimilate food? So pay attention to the gut health, pay attention to proper nutrition. And that's not so easy in kids sometimes who want, you know, sugar bombs for for for breakfast and things like that. So you work with them.
But then also, how can you help the immune system? I look at it in general, there's two parts to the immune system. There's the lymphocytes and all their variety of things, but there's also a cell called a neutrophil, which really takes care of fighting bacterial infections. So what can you do to maintain a neutrophil recovery? There's some medications that help, but also things like making sure you have sources of B12 and folate and the things that...
that help the body recover are very important. And then we spend a lot of attention afterwards to, now after the chemo's done, what's going on with the immune system? Are the lymphocytes in good shape? Are you making antibodies? We're particularly interested in a cell called the natural killer cell, which is very important for cancer prevention. And there are specific supplements that can be used. Most of the time there's a variety of mushroom,
supplements that can help the immune system recover, but it takes some time. And then, you know, and I go back to say, well, the third thing is, well, how does the body detoxify? And I am, I always am so fascinated with the body because the very same chemical pathways that build things, you know, that add hydroxyl groups here and there and, and, and can convert testosterone to estrogen and all these kinds of things.
are the exact same things the body uses to break stuff down. So you really need to make sure that the pathways for building things and breaking things down are healthy, as healthy as they can be. And we have a lot of tools nowadays. There's genomics that can look at some of the defects. There's specific lab tests that can be done. So we have a lot of tools in our toolkit. And these are the things you hear about in the IFM talks all the time.
So pay attention.
Absolutely, Dr. Nealy, this has been so amazing. I love the richness of this conversation. Thank you so much for all you do. Thank you for bringing your functional medicine hat into this space. It is so, so needed that we are able to provide a truly holistic, comprehensive care of the patient that are going through chemotherapy as well as post-therapy.
As we bring this episode to a close, if you could leave clinicians with one shift in mindset regarding how they treat cancer survivors starting tomorrow, what would it be?
Okay, no matter where you are, whether you're a family medicine doc an OBGYN doc, you know, or an oncologist, I think the important thing is to realize that the therapies are working better. And we need to pay attention to how to help people through the therapy, not only from a physical, but also from an emotional standpoint, and then do what we can to enrich their lives as they live out the rest of their life. And that's our role. Basically is to help them do that.
And thank you so much. was well said. Appreciate you, Dr. Neely. Hope you come back again soon. Yeah, see you at AIC.
Alright, see you out there at IFM.
Right! Okay, good talking to you.
Likewise.
Thank you for listening to Pathways to Wellbeing. Discover the latest research and clinical insights at IFM's annual international conference. Learn more at ifm.org forward slash A IC. The future is functional.
