For 75 years, the Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara (CFSB) has served as the backbone of oncology support in Santa Barbara.
In 1949, after receiving a cancer diagnosis and traveling to Los Angeles to receive treatment, Lillian Taylor Converse dreamed of establishing a cancer treatment facility in Santa Barbara. Her husband, Elisha Converse, turned that dream into reality with the financial support to purchase a one million volt linear accelerator for the Cancer Center, establishing the Cancer Foundation’s intent to ensure state-of-the-art treatment in our community for generations to come. Since that initial gift, there has been tremendous change in the healthcare landscape and the way oncology treatments are offered — what used to primarily be inpatient care is now often available on an outpatient basis. Programs such as wellness classes, patient navigation, genetic counseling and nutrition are now integral to patients as they journey with, through and beyond cancer.
Support CFSB
As an independent, non-profit organization, the Foundation’s Board of Trustees and staff work daily to ensure that the trust you put in us allows Ridley-Tree Cancer Center physicians, nurses and supportive care staff to have the necessary resources to provide the highest level of care on the Central Coast. These supportive care programs would not be available within our community without your generous support.
Your local Santa Barbara Oncology Supporter
Our unwavering support to patients hasn’t changed during almost seven and a half decades — ensuring that supportive care programs and services like these are available to everyone in our community. Through the generosity of our community we support offerings such as scalp cooling and acupuncture in order to enhance a patient’s sense of well-being during treatment.
Advancing Technology
The Cancer Foundation sponsors the acquisition of state-of-the-art equipment, such as the digital PET/CT machine and SPECT/CT machine in the nuclear medicine department of the Ridley-Tree Cancer Center, to provide physicians access to improved images, allowing for the detection of smaller lesions and better outcomes.
Our latest Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara Annual Report
The Foundation of RTCC
Following the successful completion of the capital campaign with Sansum Clinic to construct the new cancer center, the Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara has leased the RTCC building to Sansum Clinic, and now Sutter Health, at a reduced rate.