Knight’s Cabin Cancer Retreat – Northern Alberta
The Cause
More Albertans than ever are surviving cancer; yet survivorship care is not part of our health care system. Simple health behavior changes can have an enormous impact on survivorship, including improved quality of life, decreased anxiety, improved mood and a reduction in the possibility of cancer recurrence. Knight’s Cabin Cancer Retreats help cancer survivors make these health behavior changes, so they can make the best of the rest of their lives.
Knight’s Cabin would like to host 3 weekend retreats where we teach cancer survivors research-based information on health behaviors they can control – nutrition, exercise, and sleep and stress management. We integrate behavioral change research to ensure this weekend acts as a catalyst for life-long behaviour change. This is done in a supportive community of other cancer survivors. Attendees have the opportunity to bring a supporter with them – a spouse, family member or friend. We recognize cancer has an large impact on those who support cancer patients. Post-retreat we provide continuous support for survivors through online health behavior change groups.
While the retreats are open to all Canadians, we have primarily served residents of southern Alberta and British Columbia, with retreats offered exclusively in Canmore, Alberta. We desire to bring our retreats closer to Edmonton to serve it, Grand Prairie, and rural northern Alberta.
To ensure financial cost is never a barrier, our retreats are offered at no cost to participants. At the end of the retreat participants are given the opportunity to ‘pay it forward’ with a donation to help ensure funding sustainability.
In addition to our retreats, we would use the funds to host a day-long conference in Edmonton on health behaviors, involving presentations from experts about nutrition, physical activity, sleep and stress management. This would be followed-up by a 6-week walking group for participants.