Connect

In 2025, UVA Health allocated more than $297,000 in grant funding to 38 local nonprofit organizations. These funds support our communities' most vulnerable populations, reflecting our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and addressing healthcare workforce development.

Now, Connect takes a closer look at how ASK Childhood Cancer Foundation — one of the 2025 awardees — is benefiting from the UVA Health grant it received.

UVA Community Health partners with nonprofit organizations that support our communities’ most vulnerable populations, striving to reflect work to improve health for all populations and address the pipeline for healthcare workforce development. The UVA Community Health community grants program is an application-based program that offers large grants to community partners who improve the health of individuals in our community by promoting health, healing, and treatment in response to identified community health needs. 

Investing in Families

This grant cycle, the ASK Childhood Cancer Foundation has been awarded one of our $5,000 Healthy Spark Grants, which are designed to address significant, identified health needs and/or emerging social determinants of health (SDoH) needs outlined in the Community Health Needs Assessment.

Dani Hottle, ASK’s Grant Manager, says, “We’re so grateful UVA Health believes in what we’re doing and invests in our families. We have a lot of families in need, and we wouldn’t be able to provide for them in the ways we do if it weren’t for the support of the community.”

What is the ASK Childhood Cancer Foundation?

Since the mid-1970s, the ASK Childhood Cancer Foundation has been helping families in Central Virginia by providing emotional, mental, spiritual, and financial support to those fighting cancer. The foundation began with a group of parents with children battling cancer — these parents spent months together in waiting rooms and medical facilities, sharing their stories and forming a much-needed community, which helped them realize the need for community that others in similar situations likely shared. 

Inspired by the impact their own impromptu support group had on them, these parents worked alongside members of the pediatric hematology/oncology team at then-MCV Hospital (now Children's Hospital of Richmond at VCU) — collaboratively volunteering their time, ideas, and resources to help other local familiar facing the burdens of childhood cancer they knew all too well. 

'The Whole Community'

Today, the foundation has grown significantly — expanding from serving 61 families in 2023 to 197 families in the last fiscal year — but it maintains its aggregated approach, continuing to focus on wellbeing and support in every sense while helping childhood cancer survivors, siblings, and parents as they adjust to overwhelming changes.

Hottle notes, “ASK serves all children regardless of insurance, financial means, legal status, zip code. It’s the whole community that really helps what ASK does — without the support of the community, we’re not able to provide the holistic programs we do.”

'Pinnacle of Medical Partners'

Additionally, they are constantly focused on being good stewards, working to use their resources responsibly to holistically support as many families as they can, and the grant from UVA Health helps them pursue that work, aligning with our own strategic plan stewardship initiative and our overall mission of transforming health and inspiring hope for all Virginians and beyond.

Hottle adds, “We wanted to diversify who our supporters are. It’s important for us to have support from the communities in which we’re serving … UVA Health is the pinnacle of medical partners to be able to reach families who live in Northern and Central Virginia.”

'Survivors and Thrivers'

The foundation offers events, educational materials, fundraisers, volunteering opportunities, advocacy campaigns, and more to form community while also expanding access to care. In particular, the grant from UVA Health will be used toward community and connection events that are designed to give those with cancer and their loved ones experiences that their diagnosis and treatment have caused them to miss such as prom, graduation, birthday parties, and more. 

Hottle explains, “Cancer is incredibly isolating … the community and connection events are more than just a bingo game or a paint night: they’re an opportunity for people who are on this journey to see survivors and thrivers, an opportunity for fellowship and relationship that’s so deep and that you may not find outside of this community of cancer survivors.”

Filling the Gap

Last fiscal year, these popular events engaged 88 kids and their families. Now, the funding provided by this grant will allow the program to expand these activities so kids and caregivers can connect with those who know what they’re going through. 

In their early days, ASK provided $1,100 in support to families facing cancer. That support has grown to $96,491 in the past fiscal year, and this grant supports that continued growth. Hottle tells us, “As a nonprofit, things are very uncertain and families are dealing with a lot of uncertainty, so we’re grateful we’re still able to step in, fill that gap, and allow them to relax and feel normal for a little bit.”

Responding to the health needs of our communities, especially to the most vulnerable community members, is central to UVA Health’s mission. We strongly believe in our role as a socially responsible healthcare system, which involves partnering with nonprofit organizations to improve health outcomes across the Commonwealth of Virginia.