Cancer care is about more than treating cancer.
Cancer can change your body, your relationships, your work, your energy, your sense of yourself, and your hopes for the future.
We believe care should make room for all of it.
Charlotte Maxwell Clinic offers free integrative care and practical support to people who identify as women with cancer across the Bay Area, honoring the body, mind, spirit, and lived experience of every person during cancer treatment and beyond.
Our work is about helping people live as well as possible through cancer, not just simply getting through treatment. We care about pain and fatigue, but also about joy. About stress and fear, but also about connection and meaning. About what is happening in the body, and about the life that continues around it.
We believe quality of life matters at every stage of cancer.
And we believe no one should have to face cancer alone.
Where We Come From
Charlotte Maxwell Clinic began with one woman’s experience.
In 1987, Charlotte Maxwell was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. A social worker and public health professional deeply committed to women’s health and social justice, Charlotte knew that conventional cancer treatment would be only one part of what she needed. She brought together a group of women practitioners who offered acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, massage, guided imagery, and eventually hospice care.
They did more than provide treatments. They visited Charlotte in the hospital. When she could no longer travel, they came to her home. They surrounded her with care.
Charlotte experienced firsthand what this kind of support could make possible. Before she died in 1988, she expressed a hope that women with cancer who could not afford this kind of care would one day have access to it, too.
Her hope became our beginning.
In 1989, one of Charlotte’s practitioners, acupuncturist and homeopath Sally Savitz, brought together a group of health practitioners determined to make complementary care available to women with cancer regardless of their ability to pay. The Charlotte Maxwell Clinic officially opened in Oakland in 1991.
What began with a handful of practitioners, a shoestring budget, and a belief that something better was possible has grown into a community of clients, practitioners, staff, volunteers, donors, and partners who continue to carry that belief forward.
More than three decades later, the field has changed. The language has changed. What was once called complementary or alternative medicine is now increasingly understood as integrative care, services that are integrated into, enhance, and complement western medical approaches.
We have also changed, welcoming in all people who identify as women, including those who are non-binary, trans, genderqueer and beyond.
However the heart of our work has stayed the same:
People deserve to be cared for as whole human beings. They deserve care that recognizes their whole humanity. And access to that care should not depend on what they can afford.
What We Believe
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Our Mission
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Our Mission
Charlotte Maxwell Clinic offers free integrative care and practical support to people who identify as women with cancer across the Bay Area, honoring the body, mind, spirit, and lived experience of every person during cancer treatment and beyond.
Our mission keeps us grounded in the present: who we serve, what we offer, and how we offer it.
It reminds us that cancer care is about more than treating a disease. It is about supporting a person through one of the most challenging experiences of their life with care that recognizes their full humanity.
Our Vision
We envision a world where integrative care is a core component of standard cancer treatment, and is accessible to all, delivered with dignity, rooted in equity, and powered by community.
Our vision asks us to look beyond the walls of our clinic.
We don’t want integrative care to be a special privilege available only to people who can afford it. We want it to be understood as an essential part of comprehensive cancer care, and available to everyone who needs it.
Until that world exists, we will keep building toward it here in the Bay Area.
Our Values
Our values aren’t just qualities we aspire to have. They are commitments that shape our work.
Feminism
We are rooted in a feminist framework that affirms bodily autonomy, healing, and wellness. We challenge systemic oppression and envision a more hopeful and just world where all voices are heard and valued.
Compassion
We lead with empathy, warmth, and care, creating a safe haven where clients, staff, volunteers, and partners feel supported, encouraged, and uplifted.
Accessibility
We are committed to health equity by ensuring our services are welcoming, inclusive, and nourishing. For us, accessibility goes beyond affordability to include belonging, trust, and safety.
Community
We believe healing is enriched through connection. We cultivate an environment of mutual support and care — for one another, for our clients, for our broader integrative health and geographic communities.
Evolution
We embrace growth, adaptability, and innovation as essential to justice and healing. We listen deeply, learn continuously, and evolve in response to the changing needs of our clients, communities, and the world we share.
Integrity
We steward our mission and resources with transparency, accountability, and care. Acting with integrity builds trust and ensures our work promotes lasting support and collective flourishing.
Our Logo
Look closely at our logo and you might see a flower.
We see something else.
At its center is a person.
Around them is a circle of support.
That circle represents the community that makes healing possible: our practitioners, staff, volunteers, donors, partners, friends, and supporters. It includes people who have walked through our doors and people who have never been inside the clinic but believe deeply in what we are building together.
The circle is not just our logo.
It is how we understand our work, healing, and represents our hope for the future.
We believe care is something we create together.
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.”
