30 Years and Going Strong!
Our Guiding Principles
We are a group of women who have joined together because of our commitment to the following beliefs:
- Women do NOT cause their own cancer and should not blame themselves for their cancer diagnosis.
- Many factors are involved in the cause of cancer.
- Women should be empowered to be involved in their own cancer treatment.
- No cancer journey is the same.
- All women deserve to be treated in a safe, open, non-judgmental, and nurturing environment.
Our Mission
To provide San Francisco Bay Area low-income women with cancer the opportunity for improved health outcomes and quality of life by providing free access to compassionate, integrative care.
Our Vision
Every woman with cancer should have access to integrative care to help them manage the symptoms of traditional cancer treatment no matter their race, economic ability, sexual orientation/identification, immigrant status, or language.
Our History
The clinic is named in honor of Charlotte Maxwell, a forward-thinking social worker and public health professional who, after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer in early 1987, put together her own team of complementary health practitioners to supplement her conventional care. Her team of women practitioners specialized in Chinese herbal medicine, acupuncture, massage, guided imagery, homeopathy, and eventually hospice care. They gave Charlotte loving support, visited her in the hospital, and when she could no longer travel, brought their services to her home.
Charlotte expressed the hope that one day, low-income women with cancer would be able to receive the complementary treatments that did so much to ease her suffering throughout her cancer journey. She died December 6, 1988 at the age of 56.
In 1989, drawing inspiration from Charlotte’s last wishes, Sally Savitz, an acupuncturist and homeopath on Charlotte’s team, assembled a group of health care providers with the mission to make free of charge, complementary treatments available to underserved, low-income women with cancer.
Now, the approach of combining complementary therapies with standard medical treatment is called integrative care. Charlotte Maxwell Clinic has provided compassionate integrative care, free of charge, to thousands of low-income women with cancer in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“At that time, we were sweetly naive enough to believe that we could change the world and we could do anything. And I think that that hope of being able to change something has stayed with me since that time.”
