The Ovarian Cancer Project
Steps Through OC is the first program of its kind, offering free counseling, education, and a host of resources for those who are facing ovarian cancer, as well as their family and caregivers.
When people are diagnosed with an acute disease, they enter a new world, one with unwritten rules they do not understand. At the same time as they are trying to heal, they suffer physical and psychological harm because of their inability to navigate the hidden social conflicts of being a patient.
GreenHouse took on this issue through a year-long study of a disease where these conflicts are particularly severe: ovarian cancer. Working with the Susan Poorman Blackie Foundation and the Clarity Foundation, we determined that ovarian cancer patients face eight fundamental social conflicts, including everything from learning and decision-making styles to how to handle their changing roles in their families.
Finally, at a symposium with patient advocates and other health care leaders, we envisioned a way to foreground the conflicts patients will experience, designing a new model to give them the social support they will need from day one.
Our work informed the development and launch of Steps Through OC, a six-month program of The Clearity Foundation consisting of free professional counseling in tandem with education, referrals and other resources for any woman facing ovarian cancer, her family and active caregivers—the first such program of its kind.
“The GreenHouse experience is extraordinary in form, process and outcome. Strategic imagination, thoughtful design, and practical execution converge mysteriously through the team’s boardroom meets sacred space approach, and the result is nothing short of transformation. It’s a process that calls organizations and actors to go deep, be willing and courageous, and get un-endingly curious in order to manifest necessary and revolutionary change.”
—Buck Dodson, President, Susan Poorman Blackie Ovarian Cancer Foundation