Whole-Person Cancer Care

Often a cancer diagnosis makes people feel like their world is about to collapse.

At UCLA Health cancer clinics, patients and families facing this vexing disease are surrounded by a specialized team of helping hands.

“There is a lot of care, a lot of respect, a lot of compassion,” says Dr. Kauser Ahmed, a psychologist and director of the Simms/Mann-UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology. “Plus a lot of teaching, empowering, and supporting.”

The Simms/Mann-UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology was the first in the nation to establish a model of integrative care for patients and their families touched by cancer. To enhance patients’ whole-person wellness, the Center provides educational and support services that integrate psychological, nutritional, spiritual, and other approaches to healing.

Its unique model is based on a belief, backed by academic research, that treating the medical aspect of cancer is the first part of providing the best in care. Health care – when it is truly comprehensive and integrative – also treats the whole person: mind, body, and spirit.

The Simms/Mann Center offers psychosocial services that include individual and family counseling, nutritional guidance, oncology psychiatry, spiritual care, and other integrative modalities that help support and empower patients and their loved ones through the trajectory of their cancer care.

A Simms/Mann Center team of multidisciplinary clinicians cares for nearly 3,000 patients a year who attend over 20,000 in-person or telehealth appointment visits from 19 UCLA oncology practices across Southern California, from Laguna to Santa Clarita, from Alhambra to Santa Barbara.

Highly-trained Simms/Mann integrative clinicians, embedded as a part of the medical team in each oncology practice, work alongside the doctors and nurses to connect with the patient and family, and assist them to develop their own unique pathway to wellbeing through their cancer treatment.

With few exceptions, patient services are free. “They don’t need to do anything but receive the care and support and get better,” Ahmed says.

The Simms/Mann Center is part of the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and UCLA Health.

The Center is also home to a nationally recognized training program that has been cultivating the next generation of skilled and compassionate medical students, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and chaplains to bring its philosophy of whole person care to Cancer Centers across the country. The Simms/Mann Center has trained over 100 psycho-oncology experts who share this innovative model with countless patients and a dozen health systems.

The Simms/Mann UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology was founded more than 25 years ago and continues to benefit from the vision and the generous support of psychotherapist Dr. Victoria Mann Simms and her husband, Ronald A. Simms. 

The couple’s foundation pledged $18 million last year toward a campaign by UCLA Health to create a $50 million endowment, so that the Center’s vital care can be everlasting. The foundation’s commitment includes a gift-matching fund of $6 million.