$50 Million Gift To Accelerate A Shared Mission: Eradicate Cancer And Create Healthier Communities

City of Hope just announced a $50 million gift from the Lennar Foundation. It’s the largest single philanthropic contribution to City of Hope Orange County and establishes Lennar Foundation Cancer Center to accelerate the vision of eradicating cancer and creating healthier communities.

Lennar Foundation’s gift expedites City of Hope’s plans to invest $1 billion to develop and operate a comprehensive cancer campus in Irvine and establish an Orange County network of advanced cancer care and research that the health care organization says will speed groundbreaking treatments directly to a community with growing needs.

“When you have an organization that’s 108 years old, there are moments in time that you're able to point to as being transformational and changing the trajectory for thousands and thousands of people who are battling cancer,” said Robert Stone, president and CEO of City of Hope and the Helen and Morgan Chu Chief Executive Officer Distinguished Chair. “This is one of those times. This is a transformational gift of hope that will change cancer care delivery on multiple dimensions.”

City of Hope is a world leader in the research and treatment of cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases. Lennar Foundation is the charitable arm of Lennar Corporation, one of the nation’s leading builders of homes.

Join industry leaders in the fight against cancer and the promotion of healthier communities by registering for the Healthcare in the Age of Personalization Virtual Summit on May 3-4. Don't miss the opportunity to be part of this shared mission

When I heard the announcement, the first thing that came to my mind was the word convergence. I believe that we're at a time when all sectors—whether healthcare, development, corporate or higher education—all need each other more than ever before.

To learn more about the gift and what it will mean for Orange County and cancer treatment innovation, I spoke with:

• Robert Stone, president and CEO, City of Hope
• Annette M. Walker, president, City of Hope Orange County
• Jon Jaffe, co-chief executive officer and co-president, Lennar Corporation
• Kristin J. Bertell, chief philanthropy officer, City of Hope

What I see coming to life here, beyond the gift itself, is the convergence of what one might see as two unrelated industries partnering to create healthier communities. If we're going to create synergies, we're all going to have to find a way to invest in each other.

Bringing Cancer Care to More People

The future 190,000-square-foot Lennar Foundation Cancer Center at City of Hope Orange County will be located on 11 acres at Five Point’s Great Park in the heart of Irvine. It is scheduled to open in 2022, and construction is already underway. In addition, Orange County’s only hospital dedicated exclusively to treating and curing cancer will open at City of Hope Irvine in 2025.

This gift helps a community where nearly 20% of patients diagnosed with cancer must travel outside the area for advanced cancer care. According to Stone, 4,000 people make the trip through traffic every year to come to City of Hope’s other locations.

Lennar Foundation Cancer Center at City of Hope Orange County will bring to the area:

• Local access to more than 1,000 physicians and researchers
• Access to hundreds of clinical trials
• A range of treatment options, from chemotherapy to immunotherapy to new ways for preventing and treating cancer in its early stages—including highly targeted genomics and precision medicine breakthroughs
• Supportive care programs to help patients and their families overcome the psychosocial issues that can accompany a serious illness

“What's always impressed us about City of Hope is not just their expert doctors and researchers and the medicine that they produce,” said Jon Jaffe, co-chief executive officer and co-president, Lennar Corporation. “But even more is the way that they treat people and take care of the human side of dealing with such a horrible disease.”

In fact, the relationship between Lennar and City of Hope began when one of Lennar’s associates received treatment at City of Hope about 20 years ago. He recovered and is still thriving today.

“I was very close with him,” said Jaffe. “That was my first introduction to City of Hope. And from that I just became very impressed with everything that I encountered. What has consistently impressed me the most—even more than the great medicine—is the culture of caring for the people. That hit home for me at a fundraiser I hosted at my home. A woman came up to me and a doctor and she told us a story about her husband who, unfortunately, had passed away. He was treated at City of Hope. She described the day she went to go pick up his belongings and how caring the valet parking attendant was to her. She was crying as she was telling us the story, and we all started crying. If your culture gets all the way down to the valet parking attendant, you're doing something really, really good. And that just really cemented the relationship.”

I enjoy hearing that back story, because we never really know what seeds are going to grow, and where the opportunities for partnerships become stronger. Sometimes we have to have patience to get to know each other, to know how we can best help each other.

That’s something City of Hope understands.

“I've been part of the healthcare system my whole career, and it’s filled with wonderful people and we've done so much good work,” said Annette M. Walker, president of City of Hope Orange County. “But one of the best ways to make changes in our communities is to work with other businesses that also have a stake in the community and who invest in the community in a different way.”

“In the end, forming authentic relationships with individuals and organizations that share vision and values results in extraordinary partnerships,” said Kristin J. Bertell, City of Hope’s chief philanthropy officer.

To me, this is an example of a partnership that makes sense. Lennar multiplies its value proposition when it can create more healthy communities and, in the same way, City of Hope now can multiply its footprint by knowing that they can provide cancer care that's closer to the individual in those communities that need it. It really demonstrates how people outside of the healthcare industry recognize the importance of accelerating cancer care research and its outcomes.

“You know, what we’re creating here—it looks like a building, but that's not what it really is: it's a sacred place,” said Walker. “This is a place of hope and healing. Patients and their families may be at a cancer center for eight hours because of their treatments. What we’re building has to embody hope and healing and comfort. We've gone to great lengths to partner with our patients in the community to ask them, what do you want to see here?”

Bringing Diverse Populations Together

A portion of the Lennar gift will support collaborative research between City of Hope and Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center in Miami, along with the University of Miami and Jackson Memorial health systems on precision medicine approaches to cancer that will help eliminate health inequities.

City of Hope and Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center serve two of the most diverse areas in the United States. Both organizations are committed to conducting high-impact research that addresses the cancer burden in their communities.

Stone and I have talked over the years about the diversity of the population in City of Hope's primary service area, and the health disparity questions that are raised by that diverse population. Different ethnicities respond to various treatments in different ways, so there’s a huge need to make sure that clinical trials can include a variety of people.

“If there's any place that mirrors our own diversity, Miami does,” said Stone. “What Lennar Foundation has helped us do is bring together these two diverse populations. The forefront of medicine is personalized care and looking at what health disparities exist, and how we can attack those disparities. This partnership goes far beyond a building in Orange County. At the end of the day, in every conversation, we always bring it back to the patient: what does this mean for somebody who hears the words, ‘You have cancer’? This is about research, it's about compassionate care, and it's about coming together in diverse partnerships to bring the latest treatments to patients and their families. That's what this is announcement today is about.”

Building Healthy Communities

In addition, if we want healthy communities, we also need healthy homes and workplaces.

“It's a big focus of ours, of how do we build a healthier home,” said Lennar’s Jaffe. “So, we are looking at the things we can do that not only affect the environment that we all live in, but also the materials that make the home healthier. As an example, we're introducing into our homes a device that helps homeowners maintain their water flow or detects if there's a leak to conserve water—and many other features to make the home more environmentally sensitive and friendly.”

I’m always looking for companies that acknowledge and embrace their increasingly significant role in the health of their own employees. I’ve been saying for years that we’re all in the business of health—no matter our industry. This past year the pandemic made that more obvious than ever.

So I was interested to hear that Lennar hired a chief medical officer.

“For the first time in our 65+ year history, we’ve hired a chief medical officer,” said Jaffe. “We did that at the beginning of Covid-19, because we felt like we needed to help. Now, that individual is turning a lot of their efforts not only to Covid-19, but also to what can we do to help make our associates healthier. City of Hope focuses on cancer and diabetes, so it's a very good tie in for our overall focus on how can we help our communities be better? Health is a big part of that.”

Visions for the Future

The most obvious benefit to the region is a significant increase in the access to care for those who live in Orange County. But this investment will also fuel innovation by attracting talent and students interested in pursuing research.

Specialty care will take on a whole new meaning to a community that's in search of it—across the community and across the region, as opposed to a single location. I wondered what this might mean for Orange County: how might this gift and City of Hope’s investment in the region mobilize universities, health sciences, talent—how does this mobilize the community?

“We've had discussions with local universities, and we think that we have a tremendous opportunity for creating a strong relationship for the students that they're recruiting to be trained here, and for our ability to help train those students or to hire those students,” Walker says. “We're already seeing it. We’re also working to create a pipeline for talent from our disadvantaged neighborhoods, create windows of opportunity that people may not have seen before.”

“We're an academic institution that is creating a second campus with capabilities that will be close to our original Duarte campus—that’s an innovation in and of itself,” said Walker. “And one of the reasons Orange County was chosen is because of the types of innovation and opportunity that rests here. It’s hard to say what the biggest impact this gift will make, because it’s such a significant enabler.”

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