Strengthening the Cancer Care Ecosystem Through Relational Infrastructure
How the Ottawa Cancer Foundation convened a cross-sector Community of Practice to improve supportive cancer care by building connection, shared language, and collective action across a fragmented system.
The Client
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 in Ottawa is delivered by a wide range of organizations that often serve the same patients and families, but rarely have structured opportunities to learn and plan together.
Key challenges included:
- Fragmentation across the system: Hospitals, community health centres, nonprofits, hospice and palliative care providers, and public health teams often operate in parallel rather than in coordination.
- Navigation gaps for patients and caregivers: Providers and families struggle to know what supports exist, for whom, and when to introduce them.
- Uneven access to culturally safe and identity-aware care, particularly for communities facing structural barriers.
- Late referrals to palliative, psychosocial, and supportive services due to stigma, uncertainty, or lack of shared language.
- Provider burnout and isolation, especially among those working with grief, end-of-life care, and complex family dynamics.
OCF identified that no single organization could address these challenges alone. What was needed was not another program, but relational infrastructure: a way to connect people, knowledge, and practice across the ecosystem.
Our Approach
Sayid Consulting designed and facilitated the Ottawa Supportive Cancer Care Community of Practice (OSCC-CoP) as a year-long, structured, evidence-informed process, not a webinar series or working group.
The approach treated participants not as attendees, but as co-stewards of the system.
1. Designing for Psychological Safety and Trust
Each session was intentionally structured to create conditions where honest, complex conversations could happen across roles and institutions. Sessions opened with shared assumptions that emphasized lived experience, non-linearity, and care for self and others.
Small breakout groups were used consistently to foster depth, reflection, and peer learning allowing participants to speak as people, not just representatives of organizations.
2. Balancing Knowledge, Experience, and Practice
Sessions combined:
- Knowledge Spotlights and Living Libraries with community and system partners
- Peer dialogue grounded in real cases and challenges
- Reflection questions to surface learning and guide iteration
This ensured the CoP remained practical and relevant, not abstract or performative.
3. Building Shared Infrastructure to Support Learning Between Sessions
To support continuity beyond live sessions, the CoP was anchored by a dedicated webpage that functioned as a shared learning hub. The page housed:
- An archive of session summaries and materials
- A directory of participating organizations and providers
- Curated resources, tools, and referrals surfaced through the CoP
This light-touch infrastructure reinforced that the CoP was not a series of standalone events, but an evolving network, enabling participants to reconnect, follow up, and share resources as needs emerged.
4. Anchoring the Work Relationally
In addition to five virtual sessions, an in-person Wind Phone Gathering was designed as a deeper relational anchor creating space to reflect on grief, loss, and meaning, and to collectively shape the future of the CoP.
Rather than rushing to outputs, the process prioritized relationship-building as a prerequisite for sustainable collaboration.
The Impact
Over the course of 2025, the OSCC-CoP produced both tangible and less visible, but equally important, outcomes.
- Broad and sustained engagement:
115 distinct providers participated across 163 touchpoints, representing hospitals, CHCs, nonprofits, hospice and palliative care, public health, and academic settings. Participation was notably “sticky,” with many returning across multiple sessions. - Shifts in practice:
Participants reported greater confidence and clarity around:- Palliative and end-of-life conversations
- Supporting adolescents, young adults, and families
- Navigating grief and caregiver roles
- Using more culturally grounded and identity-aware language in care
- Stronger cross-sector relationships:
Providers left with a clearer sense of who else is in the system, when to collaborate, and how to reduce duplication and late referrals. - A shared agenda for system improvement:
Across sessions, the community consistently surfaced priority areas including navigation, cultural safety, caregiver support, grief and bereavement, and AYA-focused care, creating entry points for future collaboration, advocacy, and funding. - Positioning OCF as a regional convener:
The CoP reinforced OCF’s role not only as a service provider, but as a trusted facilitator of learning, connection, and coordination across the cancer care ecosystem.
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:
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- Complexity is held rather than simplified
- Power dynamics are acknowledged rather than ignored
- Learning is shared across boundaries
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!
