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PMC money helps launch new state of the art cancer center at DFCI

Published Date:   January 12, 2011

Topic:   Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

This week, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute unveiled the Yawkey Center for Cancer Care. This 14-story, 200K+ square foot building will serve as the hub for outpatient cancer care at Dana-Farber. The glass-walled building, filled with natural light and soothing spaces, includes an art gallery, healing garden, salon and a center for massage and acupuncture services.   

Yawkey Center for Cancer Care

WBUR took a tour of the facility. Listen here. Here's what the Boston Globe's Karen Weintraub wrote after touring the building:

The $345 million building includes 275,000 square feet of clinical space organized around patient convenience. Instead of going to a doctor on one floor getting blood drawn on another and then heading back to the medical floor for chemotherapy, all those functions will now take place on one floor, officials said. "When you have cancer, the last thing you want to worry about is how to navigate a building," said Marlene Nusbaum, a member of Dana-Farber's patient and family advisory council, who led today's tour. The 14-story building at the corner of Brookline Avenue and Jimmy Fund Way is designed to make patients feel as comfortable and relaxed as possible. Waiting rooms are well lit, chemotherapy stations are positioned to provide great views of the city skyline, infusion chairs are heated and give massages. There's an art gallery on the third floor, down the hall from the "healing garden," a two-story space filling with bamboo and seasonal plantings. A grand piano is stationed on a mezzanine overlooking the main entry hall and volunteers are scheduled to keep it in good use. "This is a building that our patients really taught us how to build," said Dana-Farber President Edward J. Benz Jr., who joined the tour. Patients were involved at every step in the process, Benz and Nusbaum said, even getting their signatures spray painted onto construction beams, one of which was left exposed in a first-floor stair hall. More than 100 volunteers, many of them former patients and their families, will greet patients and help them navigate the new building and their treatment, said Nusbaum, who was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer seven years ago.

Dana-Farber embarked on a $1 billion capital campaign to fund the building and other programs. Money raised through Pan-Massachusetts Challenge went to this capital campaign. The PMC is represented outside the building, where the PMC Plaza is installed, including pavers that feature the towns along the main PMC route from Sturbridge to Provincetown. In its 31-year history, the PMC has donated $303 million to Dana-Farber.  

The PMC Plaza

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