Twenty Years of Team Chad, and the Ride That Gets Patients to Care

Some patients miss treatment because they cannot get a ride. Not because they do not want to go. Not because they do not understand what is at stake. Because two or three bus transfers, in the rain, on a chemotherapy day, is more than a body can do.

A new film from Team Chad tells the story of what happens when someone removes that barrier. Watch it below.

It started with a young man who noticed who was alone

Chad Welch was 27 when he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a fast-moving blood cancer. He died at 30.

During the years in between, Chad spent a lot of time in the hospital. He was the kind of person who walked the halls and stopped in doorways to talk. What he saw stayed with him.

"He met people in the hospital because he would walk and he'd stop in rooms and visit, and he just sort of took this one kid under his wing, because the kid never had anybody come see him, never had any visitors. He did not understand that, but he very quickly learned about it and did what he could do to help."

~ Judy, Chad's Mother

What bothered Chad most was the choice he watched people make. Do I go to my treatment, or do I go to my job? He did not think anyone fighting cancer should have to answer that question.

After he died, Chad's friends and fraternity brothers built Team Chad around that idea. Two decades later, it is a fund that covers the costs that have nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with whether treatment happens at all.

What the Team Chad Fund covers

At Nashville General Hospital Foundation, the Team Chad Fund provides non-clinical financial assistance to oncology patients:

• Rent and utility assistance
• Medically guided foods
• Free transportation to and from appointments

These are the expenses that pile up quietly while someone is in treatment, and they are the ones insurance does not touch.

"So many of us feel like we're not worthy of the help. Everything that Team Chad does is to remind patients that we might not ever meet, that you're not alone, and there's a huge community trying to continue on in your healing."

~ Emily Walker, Executive Director Team Chad

The fund also reaches the person sitting beside the patient. Caregivers take on rides, missed shifts, and a stack of bills that grows while they are busy taking care of someone else.

The van, and the man who drives it

In January 2023, Team Chad gave Nashville General Hospital Foundation a wheelchair-accessible van that carries eight passengers, two wheelchairs, and a driver. It started by bringing patients to the Dr. Robert E. Hardy Cancer Center. It now serves patients across the hospital's clinics. See how that first day looked.

"When I pick these patients up, they tell me all the time, you're blessed that we're able to pick them up and take them to their appointments, because a lot of them don't have transportation."

~ Dominic Sims, Team Chad van driver 

The driver does more than drive. He calls patients the morning of an appointment to say he is on his way. Sometimes a patient says they do not feel up to going. He talks with them. Often, they go.

"There's patients that have appointments. He'll call them that morning and let them know that they're on their way. And they may say, oh, I don't really want to go. But he'll talk to them and say, you really need to go to your appointment. And because it came from him, they actually get up and come to their appointments."

~ Ron Childress, Director of Ambulatory Services, NGH

That part does not show up on a budget line. A ride is transportation. A phone call from someone who knows your name is a reason to go.

What Chad's family sees now

"It makes me feel so good to think that Chad wasn't here for nothing, that he has made an impact on a lot of people's lives."

~ Judy, Chad's Mother

Chad wanted one thing: that no patient would be left behind. Twenty years later, that is still the whole idea. A ride to an appointment. A month of rent covered. Groceries that fit a treatment plan.

How you can help

Every gift to the Team Chad Fund keeps patients connected to their care.

Give at nashgenfoundation.org/funds, or contact Nashville General Hospital Foundation at 615-341-4431 or Foundation@nashvilleha.org.