By Jolene Toves
For Variety
HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — The Guam Cancer Care’s co-pay assistance program relaunched at the start of the New Year, reopening the door to financial assistance for cancer patients.
The financial assistance grant program offers a quarterly grant award to cancer patients of up to $1,200 a quarter or $4,800 annually. It helps cover a “myriad of direct support services, such as co-payment assistance, transportation, lodging, and pharmaceutical assistance,” a release from the nonprofit said.
“This co-pay assistance program levels the playing field and gives these cancer patients a fighting chance in beating this deadly disease, so for this I am truly grateful that we can provide some form of financial relief they need as they access much-needed care.” Guam Cancer Care Executive Director Terry Cuabo said.
The relaunch of the program comes with the support of the Guam Cancer Trust Fund, which provided a grant to Guam Cancer Care to fund direct support programs, including patient navigation, financial assistance, patient transportation, and issuance of patient supplies.
“A grant award in the amount of $872,321 was issued to Guam Cancer Care with an effective date of Jan. 1, 2026, to cover the funding of their four direct cancer support programs, as well as funding to implement an aggressive cancer screening program under the auspices of promoting cancer education and outreach to the community of Guam,” the release said.
Guam Cancer Care reported that programs like the patient navigation program are key to bringing in free oral chemotherapy drugs totaling more than $5 million annually to Guam cancer patients.
The release highlighted that in addition to that program, $270,000 from the grant award will cover financial assistance grant awards, and another $147,000 will go to cancer patient supplies like Ensure, colostomy supplies, and wheelchairs.
Cuabo said the funding from the Guam Cancer Trust Fund ensures continuity of key direct support programs.
“We are extremely grateful to the GCTF to include funding so that we can reimplement the co-pay assistance program, a program of which Guam cancer patients truly benefit from. Cancer treatment is not cheap and, in most cases, is unaffordable to the average person living on Guam,” Cuabo said.
