Dispatches · Issue 24 · Newsletter ·
The Existential Dispatch, Issue No. 24
Access is often discussed as a question of systems: who can enter, who is referred, who is funded, and who is heard. Thinker of the issue: José Ortega y Gasset.
A Word from the Founding Director
Access is often discussed as a question of systems: who can enter, who is referred, who is funded, and who is heard. But access is also existential. A person must be able to recognise themselves in the care being offered—to find room for circumstance, uncertainty, identity, and hope. This issue follows that question from primary care and long-term care to cinema in hospitals, cancer equity, grants, and the design of new health technologies.
Existential Thinker of the Issue
José Ortega y Gasset
“I am I and my circumstance, and if I don’t save it I don’t save myself.” — José Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote (1914)
Clinically, Ortega’s aphorism resists the fiction that a patient can be understood apart from the world in which illness occurs. Circumstance includes family, language, work, housing, disability, gender, culture, and the institutional conditions of care. To ask what is happening in a body without asking what world that body must inhabit is to produce a partial account—and often a partial intervention. en.wikiquote.org
In Academia
A July study of older adults who took part in existential group treatment in Swedish primary care finds that existential challenges are woven into general health, while routine services do not yet reliably make space for them. Relational, trustful encounters and structured existential interventions were described as practical ways to bring this dimension into ordinary care.
A July critical essay on existential suffering at the end of life in long-term care identifies a mismatch between whole-person ideals and systems organised around measurable symptoms, risk management, and task completion. Its proposed response—recognition, dignity, and witness—turns existential literacy into an interdisciplinary responsibility rather than a specialist luxury. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
In Film, Literature and Culture
A July New York Times report on MediCinema describes movie theatres being brought into U.K. hospitals so patients can share a cultural experience while receiving care. The gesture is more than diversion: it acknowledges that a patient remains a person with imagination, memory, and a public world, even when illness has narrowed the geography of daily life. nytimes.com
In Healthcare (Global)
The World Health Organization’s Global status report on cancer 2026 places the lived experience of patients, families, and caregivers beside prevention, diagnosis, treatment, palliative care, and survivorship. With an estimated 20.6 million new cases and nearly 10 million deaths annually, the report’s three strategic shifts—better capabilities, better protections, and better value—make equity a condition of progress, not an afterthought. who.int
Funding and Grant Opportunities
For teams already through the letter-of-intent stage, the Canadian Cancer Society’s Investigator-Initiated Clinical Trials Program lists a full application deadline of September 16, 2026 at 11:59 p.m. EST. The programme is a possible route for clinically grounded work, but eligibility and the required abstract-registration step should be checked carefully.
The same Canadian Cancer Society funding table lists Summit Discovery Grants 2026 (GBM Collaborative—Research Grant) with a September 23, 2026 deadline at 5:00 p.m. EST. Researchers working at the intersection of cancer, access, and lived experience should review the current outline before treating the opportunity as a fit. cancer.ca cancer.ca
Conferences and Events
CAPC lists a virtual workshop, High-Functioning Palliative Care Teams: What Works, What Doesn’t, and What’s Possible, for Wednesday, September 16, from 4–6 p.m. ET. Its focus on communication and collaboration with patients, caregivers, referrers, and colleagues is a useful reminder that existential care is also a team practice. capc.org
Startup and Innovation Watch
The innovation signal this month comes from the WHO cancer report rather than a venture announcement: it asks that research and innovation be aligned with public-health needs and equitable access. For founders and implementers, that is a demanding design test. A tool is not transformative merely because it is novel; it must enlarge a person’s practical agency without shifting the burden of interpretation onto the patient. who.int
To Close: An Existential Joke
Why did the existential AI assistant refuse to optimise the care plan?
It said, “Before I optimise your trajectory, may I ask what makes this trajectory yours?”