One Team in Action: Lessons From Mary Bird Perkins Navigators

In 2025, the navigation program at Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center was recognized with the Dr. Harold P. Freeman One Team Award, an honor that celebrates excellence in patient navigation and the collaborative spirit at the heart of patient-centered care. The recognition reflects the collective efforts of a multidisciplinary team dedicated to helping patients overcome barriers, access resources, and move through the cancer care continuum with confidence and support.

As nominations open for the 2026 award cycle, we invited navigators from across Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center to share their perspectives on the work they do every day. In this first installment, navigators reflect on their roles, the challenges they help patients navigate behind the scenes, and the often-unseen ways they remove barriers to care. Together, their stories offer a glimpse into the expertise, compassion, and teamwork that bring navigation to life.

Jennifer Ashley, RN
Nurse Navigator

Lara Griffiths, RN
Nurse Navigator

Kelly Maddox, LPN
Nurse Navigator

Tameka Martin, RN
Nurse Navigator

Louise Pilgreen, RN
Patient Navigator

Can you briefly describe your role as a patient navigator and the population you primarily support?

Jennifer Ashley, RN (JA): As a patient navigator, your main responsibility is to help move a patient’s treatment forward as efficiently as possible. You work largely behind the scenes to ensure all necessary steps are completed and any barriers are identified and resolved.

Just as every person is unique, each situation requires an individualized and thoughtful approach.

Lara Griffiths, RN (LG): I am an oncology nurse navigator with 20 years of nursing experience and 4 years in navigation. I serve adult cancer patients across the continuum of care, with particular attention to those facing social and economic barriers. Much of my work centers on addressing social determinants of health—transportation, health literacy, financial toxicity, and culturally aligned communication—so that treatment plans are not only clinically sound but realistically accessible. In doing so, navigation becomes a practical expression of health equity.

I serve at the intersection of fear and hope, where a diagnosis can fracture a person’s sense of self in a single conversation. My role is not simply to coordinate appointments or explain treatment plans, but also to walk alongside patients and families as they learn a new language of scans, staging, side effects, and uncertainty.

I translate what feels overwhelming into what feels survivable. I help people find their footing when the ground has shifted beneath them, whether that means clarifying a PET result, untangling a care plan, advocating for timely access to treatment, or sitting quietly with someone who is absorbing news they never expected to hear.

Tameka Martin, RN (TM): As a patient navigator, I provide a critical layer of support by managing the emotional, financial, and logistical complexities of an oncologic diagnosis. In navigating barriers to care, I serve as a dedicated guide and advocate, coordinating seamless care from the point of diagnosis through survivorship or end of life.

My role ensures that health-related challenges are identified and resolved promptly, allowing patients to focus on healing. The primary population served is adults aged 18 to 99+ years.

What’s something patients or families are often surprised to learn you help with?

LG: Many patients are surprised to learn that navigation extends far beyond scheduling and referrals. It is about understanding how cancer fits into their lives, their families, responsibilities, fears, and daily realities. A treatment plan may be clinically sound, but if real- life barriers are not addressed, it does not function in practice. Sometime the intervention is small—adjusting a schedule, helping secure reliable transportation, clarifying next steps—but those small actions can determine whether care moves forward or stalls.

What part of your job is hardest to explain to people outside of healthcare?

Kelly Maddox, LPN (KM): One of the hardest parts of explaining nurse navigation is what happens behind the scenes. Many assume it’s as simple as scheduling appointments. Too often, it’s not fully understood the many encounters with patients include active listening, education, insurance questions, food and housing insecurities, and multidisciplinary teams involved. The list continues…

Nurse navigators walk alongside patients during some of the most trying times in their lives. We balance clinical aspects as well as empathy, advocacy, and reassurance to the patient that we will be here throughout their care.

LG: What is hardest to explain is that when navigation is working well, success often looks uneventful; nothing dramatic happens. Appointments occur as planned. Treatments start on time. Barriers are addressed before they escalate. This work is largely preventive, and prevention rarely draws attention to itself.

When people understand what is coming next and whom they can reach out to, their anxiety softens. The medical plan does not change, but their experience of it does. This is how patient navigation improves comprehension, reduces distress, and supports informed engagement in care, core elements of high-quality oncology practice. People may forget details, but they remember how you made them feel and how supported they felt in moments of uncertainty.

Much of the work happens out of sight; coordinating between providers, clarifying orders, troubleshooting access issues, aligning schedules, and following up on details patients may never know were at risk of disrupting care. From the outside, navigation can look like “just making phone calls,” yet behind each action is clinical judgment and systems knowledge, knowing whom to contact, when to escalate, and how to remove friction without adding burden to the patient. A lot of the everyday work of navigation remains unseen, but invisible work is the glue that holds the care journey together.

What’s something you do behind the scenes that patients may never see, but you believe makes a real difference?

Louise Pilgreen, RN (LP): Unceasingly, pray for them every day.

Can you share a moment when navigation helped remove a barrier for a patient?

LG: I had an elderly patient who was undergoing treatment and was struggling to remain functional at home. The patient’s only family member was stationed overseas in the armed forces. Our team coordinated with the Red Cross to enable him to come home and help take care of the patient so that the patient could continue treatment.