The Anchorage community came to the Sisters of Providence in the late 1960s with a request to bring cancer care to Alaska so people would not have to leave the state for help. In response, the Sisters, along with the dollars and volunteer labor force of Alaska residents, built the Cobalt Center, which consisted of a vault, a small exam room and a few patient chairs. It was there that patients received cancer treatments in Alaska for the first time.
Since that time, Providence and the community have continued working together to fight cancer here at home. Providence Alaska was one of the first facilities in the nation, and the first in the Northwest, to have a CT scanner sophisticated enough to image the entire body. Most recently, the Providence Cancer Center was the first and only center in Alaska recognized by the American College of Surgeons as a Community Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Program—an accreditation accorded to only 25 percent of hospital cancer centers in the nation. Now once again, with the assistance of the community, the new Providence Cancer Center will bring to Alaska some of the latest advances in cancer-fighting technology. We will have revolutionary new ways of delivering radiation therapy. Physicians will be able to focus more precisely on tumors from more angles. This will speed treatment while minimizing the effects on surrounding healthy tissue. Providence joins these advances in technology with the passion, talent, skills and dedication of our excellent staff and physicians. Working together, we can ensure that more and more Alaskans find the best in cancer prevention and care here on the
Last Frontier. | 
