Ask Marcie (known around Ukandu as "Smalls") about her favorite part of volunteering with Ukandu, and she'll tell you she can't pick just one. 

Smalls attends both of Ukandu's camp programs and serves on the board's executive committee – but her story with Ukandu didn't start at camp at all. It started with two volunteers who wouldn't stop talking about how much they loved it.

A More Than Medicine Installment

For families affected by childhood cancer or another serious medical condition, "back to school" can mean something entirely different. School may not look the way it once did. For families affected by childhood cancer or another serious medical condition, "back to school" can mean something entirely different. School may not look the way it once did.

A More Than Medicine Installment

Throughout Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, we’re sharing stories about what childhood cancer asks of children and families—not only during treatment, but long after it ends.

This week, we turn to what comes after treatment—and why the word “survivor”, while worthy of celebration, doesn’t always tell the whole story.

A More Than Medicine Installment

This was my first Ukandu Family Camp.

For months, I had heard people talk about it with a kind of reverence that was difficult to explain. Families counted down the days until camp. Volunteers smiled when they spoke about it. Colleagues simply said, "You'll understand once you're there."

They were right.

A More Than Medicine Installment

June is National Men's Mental Health Month.

Like many men, I'm pretty good at convincing myself that things can wait. A nagging symptom? Probably nothing. Stress building up? I'll deal with it later. Something doesn't feel quite right? Let's give it a few more weeks and see what happens.

If that sounds familiar, you're not alone.

A More Than Medicine Installment

There is something extraordinary that happens at Camp Ukandu.

For one special week, in one very special place, the things that brought everyone together—the diagnoses, the treatments, the losses, the scans, the scars—are allowed to rest for a while.

And people simply get to be human with one another.

A More Than Medicine Installment

Recently, after spending time talking with some of our incredible Ukandu volunteers about grief, loss, and the experiences so many families in our community carry, I found myself continuing to think about grief long after the conversation ended. Not just grief after death, but the quieter forms of grief that families living with serious illness often carry every single day.

A More Than Medicine Installment

I’ve worked in mental health in some capacity for more than 20 years now. Different settings. Different communities. Different ages and populations. Hospitals, schools, nonprofits, clinics, camps, crisis moments, ordinary moments. And through all of it, one thing has remained true: people need each other.

Not perfectly. Not with the right words all the time. But consistently, honestly, and humanly.

A More Than Medicine Installment

There are moments in healthcare that change the way you understand the world, not just as a clinician, but as a person. But for many families, that understanding does not begin in a hospital or a training program. It begins in the quiet, disorienting space where life first shifts: when something feels wrong, when answers are not yet clear, when uncertainty settles into everyday routines.