Dr. Kerry Courneya

is the coverage, you know, these be paid for by the health insurance companies.

In many of these major cancer centers across the U.S., you see a lot of support from philanthropic dollars.

donors who believe in the importance of exercise say, hey, I want to fund an exercise program because I see this as being really important for these patients.

So we have to think about how we can fund it, how we can deliver it, and make sure that all newly diagnosed cancer patients have access to these exercise programs.

These chemotherapies can be very expensive.

These newer immunotherapies can be very expensive.

And this is where if we can demonstrate exercise as a benefit for any of these cancer outcomes, it would be game-changing.

I remember a study we did where we showed that breast cancer patients who exercise during chemo

had a lower risk of recurrence or dying from breast cancer eight years later.

And I remember talking to the medical oncologist and says, if we can demonstrate in a larger study that exercise lowers the risk of recurrence, he said that would change the game.

He says, you know what it costs when a breast cancer patient has a recurrence?

A million dollars.

So that's the estimate that the healthcare system is going to be in for when someone has a recurrence of cancer with all the drugs and treatments and all the medical care that they're going to be entitled to receive.

So you're right.

You know, even if we can prevent a small number of recurrences,

the cost effectiveness of exercise is very high.

Very recent study in breast cancer patients with metastatic cancer, wonderful randomized control trial showing many of these benefits we talked about, also did the cost effectiveness analysis and showed this is a very cost effective intervention as well compared, as you've pointed out, to many of these other treatments that we're offering patients.

So most of the stuff linking exercise to lower risk of recurrence has been observational studies, epidemiological studies.

So these are always viewed with a healthy amount of skepticism by oncologists and by health insurance companies and stuff as well.

Oh, there's an association between exercise and these cancer outcomes.