AdventHealth Daytona Beach's new wellness center does more than offer integrative therapies such as yoga, acupuncture and massage — it provides them to cancer patients for free.
The SherryStrong Integrative Wellness Center is named in honor of Sherry Pollex, who died in 2024 after living with ovarian cancer for almost a decade.
Her experience led her to establish the SherryStrong Integrative Medicine Oncology Clinic in 2020 at Novant Health’s Weisinger Cancer Institute in Charlotte, N.C., according to a Feb. 14 news release from AdventHealth.
The new center at AdventHealth Daytona Beach (Fla.) is the second SherryStrong location to open and was made possible through a fundraising effort led by the AdventHealth Daytona Beach Foundation, with support from the NASCAR Foundation and the Martin Truex Jr. Foundation, the release said.
John Reilly, MD, a radiation oncologist at AdventHealth Daytona Beach, spoke with Becker's about the importance of integrative therapies in cancer care.
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What was the impetus for Advent Health to open the SherryStrong Integrative Wellness Center?
Dr. John Reilly: Sherry Pollex, who is the namesake for Sherry Strong, was in her 30s when she was diagnosed with cancer and went through chemotherapy. She became very interested in integrative wellness care to help her during her multiple rounds of chemo, surgeries and recovery.
She felt, and it's true, that she was benefiting from mindfulness, yoga, massage therapy, acupuncture and other complementary integrative care approaches. She started Sherry Strong because she wanted to do what she could to bring these services out into the community because, unfortunately, it's still somewhat of a hidden area of healthcare. She wanted to bring it more to the forefront.
She was also a member of the NASCAR community; her father was a team owner and her longtime boyfriend was Martin Truex Jr., a NASCAR driver. Because of her affiliation, she targeted NASCAR cities, opening the first SherryStrong center in Charlotte, N.C. Then, of course, with our speedway here, Daytona Beach was another target.
At AdventHealth, we believe in treating the whole person — mind, body and spirit — which aligns very much with integrative care and the Sherry Strong initiative, where the guiding principle is "Feel strong, feel beautiful, feel healthy." Working together was a glove-in-hand fit.
Q: What specific offerings are housed within the wellness center?
JR: Right now — and it may expand — we have yoga, massage, nutrition counseling, meditation, acupuncture, support groups and patient education classes.
For yoga, patients can come to our facility here or they can also do it virtually, which is nice, so they can do it from home. Our nutritionists are also available for virtual appointments as well.
Q: Why was it important for the center to offer its services within the hospital and at no cost to patients?
JR: Number one, patients coming in for cancer treatment already have a ton of appointments, a ton of copays, stress, transportation concerns — you name it, they have it. Many are still trying to work or take care of their families, so adding another appointment is just really hard. I can talk to someone about acupuncture or ask if they've ever tried massage, but if they have to set up another appointment and go somewhere else, it just becomes insurmountable.
The other thing is the cost; if it's another cost to them, then it's just not feasible. Most of these services are not covered by insurance at this point in time. Hopefully, in the future, we can get to a point where insurers recognize the benefits and cover them because, long term, I think it will actually help lower healthcare costs.
Q: Are the positive effects of integrative therapies for patients with cancer becoming more widely understood by the healthcare industry at large?
JR: I think there's still a long way to go, unfortunately. It's moving ahead, but kind of at a snail's pace.
Part of it is that people, especially in medicine, look for studies to be done before altering the way they take care of patients. There are tons and tons of studies looking at chemotherapies, immunotherapy combinations and other traditional cancer treatments.
There's not a whole lot of studies being done where, for example, we take a group of patients and do acupuncture, or study mindfulness and stress reduction, and compare outcomes. The few studies that have been done do show positive effects, but they are not really at the forefront.
Right now, there aren't big companies backing integrative therapies, so we're not going to get the same level of studies, which makes it harder to get the word out and implement these treatments.
If we can get the right powers behind it, maybe by trying to get CMS, Medicare and Medicaid to buy into it, then others would follow.
Q: What do hospital and health system leaders need to know about integrative oncology care?
JR: While these services may not drive a lot of revenue, they are going to drive patient care once patients see, "Oh, this center offers all this additional care for me as a whole person."
And while more patients helps the bottom line, their care is also going to be less costly.
Ideally these patients will be better managed, feeling and functioning better, so they won't be going to the hospital as much. In the long run, fewer emergency room visits, hospitalizations and complications will reduce costs for hospitals or health systems that have a significant portion of their patient population in oncology.
They've just got to be able to listen to us, let us explain, and to some extent, just believe us — that in the long run, this is going to be helpful.
With the aging population, the incidence of most diseases goes up. We will definitely see a need for cancer services in the near future. The more integrative cancer care becomes, the better off patients will be.