Cancer Doulas “are not ‘nice to have.’ They should be accessible to anyone who needs it.”

Talaya Dendy

Hastings resident Talaya Dendy is one of 24 winners of the Bush Foundation Bush Fellowship for her work in providing wholistic care to cancer patients.
The Bush Fellowship is awarded to leaders throughout Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota in order to provide a “self-designed leadership program that gives individuals the flexibility they need to develop their own capacity to lead effectively.” The fellowship comes with up to $150,000 to support the leadership program.
Dendy was awarded the Bush Fellowship for her work as a Cancer Doula and wellness advocate. With the fellowship, she plans on pursuing wellness certification from the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching, travelling to blue zones to experience first-hand areas with exceptional longevity and strengthen her healthcare networks in the Twin Cities and beyond.
Dendy’s journey to becoming a Cancer Doula started when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in 2011. As a patient, Dendy recognized a “huge gap in the cancer care system” of supporting patients wholistically.
Dendy describes patients often spending “unnecessary energy spinning their wheels” on getting questions answered, knowing who on their team to talk with, finding second opinions and generally advocating for themselves. These unknowns can cause huge amounts of unnecessary stress, anxiety and depression which can hinder recovery.
For Dendy, the firsthand experience of a cancer diagnosis and working with a team of medical professionals is key for providing missing support to cancer patients: “So much emotional support was missing from someone who had been through something similar.”
In 2017, Dendy founded On the Other Side, an enterprise that works to provide those missing emotional supports to cancer patients. While Dendy started by calling herself a Cancer Coach, the term “did not really touch or get to the heart of what I do.”
Dendy shifted to the term doula, often associated with non-medical personnel who assist in childbirth and hospice care, which better fit her wholistic approach.
While Dendy has various ongoing partnerships in the medical field including as a community partner with Allina Health/Courage Kenny and the Minnesota Cancer Clinical Trials Network, the role of Cancer Doula is still not common in cancer treatment. In particular it is rarely covered by insurance thus forcing patients to pay for the service out of pocket.
Raising awareness about this missing emotional support within cancer treatment and the need for Cancer Doulas is a key issue for Dendy.
"Cancer Doulas “are not ‘nice to have.’ They should be accessible to anyone who needs it,” said Dendy.
Dendy envisions a framework for a standardized certification for Cancer Doulas in order for more to be available, as well as better insurance coverage for the service for patients.
“I should not have had to find the support for myself,” said Dendy.