Strengthening the Cancer Care Ecosystem Through Relational Infrastructure
Building the relationships, shared language and learning infrastructure that help a fragmented care ecosystem act more like a system.
The Ottawa Cancer Foundation (OCF) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting people affected by cancer through programs that address emotional, practical, and social needs across the cancer continuum.
Through its Community Cancer Hub, OCF plays a unique role in the region: not only delivering direct services, but convening partners across healthcare, community, and social systems to improve how supportive cancer care is understood, accessed, and coordinated.
The Challenge
Supportive cancer care was distributed across hospitals, CHCs, nonprofits, hospice, public health and other providers. The gap was not simply another service; it was the absence of structured opportunities to learn together, coordinate referrals and build culturally safer practice.
How We Worked
- Designed a year-long Community of Practice around psychological safety and trust.
- Combined knowledge spotlights, living libraries, peer dialogue and practice-based reflection.
- Created a shared online learning hub to sustain connection between sessions.
- Used an in-person Wind Phone Gathering as a relational anchor for grief, meaning and future direction.
What Changed
- 115 distinct providers participated across 163 touchpoints.
- Participants reported greater confidence in palliative, grief, caregiver and identity-aware conversations.
- Strengthened cross-sector relationships and reduced the sense of working in isolation.
- Created a shared agenda for future system improvement and reinforced OCF’s role as a regional convener.
Cancer care is not only medical.
People facing cancer, and those who care for them, need emotional support, navigation, cultural safety, and community connection. Yet these supports are often delivered by different organizations, funded separately, and accessed unevenly.
This work demonstrates how strategy, systems change, and care improvement can happen through relationship-centred facilitation, not just plans or programs.
For organizations working in complex, multi-actor systems, the Ottawa Cancer Foundation’s Community of Practice offers a powerful example of what becomes possible when:
- Complexity is held rather than simplified
- Power dynamics are acknowledged rather than ignored
- Learning is shared across boundaries
Client Feedback
Sayid Consulting partnered with the Ottawa Cancer Foundation to develop and facilitate a year-long community of practice, supporting both process and relationships over time.
“Sayid Consulting partnered with the Ottawa Cancer Foundation to develop and facilitate a year-long community of practice, supporting both process and relationships over time. Working with Manal and her team over the past year was a positive and meaningful experience. Manal’s approach to supporting the development of a community of practice was thoughtful, relational, and grounded in trust. Manal was easy to work with, investing time in understanding our context, creating opportunities to strengthen relationships, and supporting genuine connection across the group. This long-term, thoughtful and intentional approach made a big difference and aligned strongly with our values and goals. Manal also helped us uncover our growth edges as an organization. We are grateful for the partnership and would highly recommend Manal and her team to organizations looking to build community, in a meaningful, and sustainable way over time!”
Jill Burns, Director
Community Partnerships and Programs
The Ottawa Cancer Foundation (OCF)