About Clearity

Our Mission

Clinical Advancements & Essential Resources for Women Fighting Ovarian Cancer

Clearity Foundation strives to improve the survival and quality of life of women with ovarian cancer. We give hope to women with ovarian cancer and their families.

Founded in 2008 by scientist and survivor Laura Shawver, Ph.D., Clearity Foundation seeks to revolutionize ovarian cancer treatment. Every year, more than 22,000 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Unfortunately, survival improvements are decades behind other cancers. Clearity is working to change that.

Clearity believes that all women deserve the best possible therapies for their unique disease and the best possible emotional support for their unique life challenges. To achieve this, we:

  • Share the latest information on treatment options.
  • Help women identify the most useful and comprehensive tests to better understand the molecular profile of their cancer.
  • Guide women to clinical trials where appropriate.
  • Offer professional emotional support and educational resources to women and caregivers.
  • Provide an online community with information and social support.

All of Clearity’s services are provided free of charge. We believe all patients should have access to the most advanced care, personalized for them, regardless of their ability to pay.

Treatment Decision Support Program

Clearity takes a comprehensive, hands-on approach to help women identify the treatments that may work best against their unique disease. Assessing their medical history, as well as tumor molecular profiles and other diagnostics, Clearity professionals help women and their physicians chart the most advantageous course of treatment.

When a treatment decision needs to be made, Clearity provides information about the standard options for each patient’s clinical situation as well as the latest promising results from drugs in clinical development.   This decision is further individualized by considering the unique information derived from her tumor biomarker/genomic profiling tests.

Tumor biomarker testing identifies the molecular characteristics in a tumor that may be driving its growth and survival that can suggest potential treatments.   A member of the Clearity scientific team reviews this information with patients, answers their questions about the results and helps them find clinical trials when appropriate.

Our Clinical Trial Finder includes all trials enrolling in the USA that are available to ovarian cancer patients.  By answering questions about her clinical situation, prior therapies and tumor characteristics, she finds only the trials for which she is most likely to be eligible.   The trials retrieved by the search are linked to any reported results for drugs in the trial–helping prioritize them for discussions with her physician.

Clearity does not provide medical advice about which treatments they should receive. Instead, our staff explain tumor-testing results and standard treatment options for their situation as well as provide potential questions, and other information, that patients can discuss with their physicians.

Psychosocial Support

Clearity believes that all women and active caregivers deserve compassionate and professional emotional support while managing an ovarian cancer diagnosis.  To this end, Clearity offers the Steps Through OC program for ovarian cancer psychosocial support.

This personalized, one-to-one assistance helps individuals manage the stress and coping associated with their diagnosis.  This program offers ten sessions of professional support over the course of six months to both patients/survivors and active caregivers as well as educational content, resources and referrals.

Our Expert OC Guide team does not provide psychotherapy services. Instead, our team provides professional, ovarian cancer-focused support around the emotional experience of the diagnosis.

All of our Expert OC Guides have a master’s degree in mental health and offers expert compassionate listening skills, education in coping methods and useful, personalized resources.

Advancing Care

Since 2008, Clearity has helped hundreds of women learn more about their tumor’s molecular characteristics by facilitating access to the testing itself and/or understanding the testing results. The Clearity database records the results from each woman’s tumor testing, along with information about the therapies they received and how well they worked.

Matching molecular profiles with outcomes provides additional evidence to help guide treatment decisions. Clearity has created a separate data repository that stores privacy-protected clinical and tumor profiling data. As this database grows, it supports research studies and helps Clearity provide more up-to-date information about the therapies being considered by the women and physicians who come to Clearity for support and scientific guidance.

Someone Who Listens

Clearity exists to help women find credible information about their ovarian cancer and the treatments that can help them survive. Clearity also exists to support women and caregivers through an emotionally challenging period in their lives. We are scientists and mental health professionals and know that cancer’s impact goes way beyond a clinical diagnosis. Our goal is to understand each patient’s unique priorities and needs. That means long, purposeful discussions informed by both science and compassion.