About CancerChoices - Our Mission, Approach & History



Our mission

Our mission is to reduce suffering and support healing and resilience among people with cancer.

We help people make skillful choices in conventional care, complementary care, and self care. And we contribute to raising the legitimacy of whole-person, integrative cancer care among medical professionals and people affected by cancer.

Our approach

We create a healing space for people to come together to learn about hope, community, healing, and new priorities in life within the context of cancer. 

We describe the landscape of cancer care and the wide variety of options that can be integrated to promote healing.

We evaluate and summarize evidence to help people assess their cancer care options. This allows people to skillfully integrate self care and complementary care with conventional cancer care.

Grounded in a balanced approach, we do not recommend or endorse therapies or practitioners. At CancerChoices, we’re not promoting anything except informed choice—something we believe every person with cancer deserves to have.

Built on experience and trust

As a program of the nonprofit Commonweal, CancerChoices is an independent voice, dedicated solely to providing unbiased information to support people with cancer to live as well as possible for as long as possible.

  • We receive no funding from manufacturers or retailers of complementary therapies.
  • We investigate cancer therapies and practices by relying heavily on peer-reviewed studies and reviews in medical journals.
  • Many advisors and other integrative oncology experts provide expertise on our content.


History of Commonweal and CancerChoices

Commonweal cancer-related programs

Commonweal has more than 40 programs dedicated to healing in its many forms. Programs with a special interest in cancer include these.