Winner of the 2021 Catalyst for Change Award — Tomma Hargraves
For many cancer patients, the financial burden of their disease can place ostensibly simple acts, like reaching the hospital or treatment center, out of reach. In 2013, Tomma Hargraves developed the Lung Cancer Initiative’s Access to Care Gas Card program, which gives out $50 gas cards to lung cancer patients in North Carolina. So far, more than 2,000 patients — in 92 of North Carolina’s 100 counties — have benefitted from the program. In 2019 alone, the gas cards helped patients travel more than 300,000 miles to treatment. Hargraves does not plan to stop there. She and her colleagues have now built a network of more than 50 cancer-treatment centers and they are working to assist as many patients as possible.
For more remarkable stories from the 2021 Winners of the Cancer Community Awards, visit our Heroes of Cancer Care collection.
