How We Win
Find The Cause. Accelerate The Cure.
Improve Today’s Response. Prevent Tomorrow’s Diagnosis.
To improve survival today and prevent tomorrow’s diagnosis, patients and families need Earlier Understanding.
Earlier Understanding is what allows people to respond sooner, avoid common mistakes, keep options open, and act before options are lost.
Who We Are
Lived Experience ➤ Earlier Understanding ➤ Effective Survival Response
CFA is an Australian patient-led foundation turning lived experience into Earlier Understanding for cholangiocarcinoma and other biliary tract diseases.
We turn Earlier Understanding into practical survival response pathways for patients, families, and clinicians.
Our Purpose: Why We Are Here
To create Earlier Understanding, so patients keep options open now, and their families understand cause earlier, so they do not become tomorrow’s newly diagnosed patients.
Our Mission: Execution Not Advocacy
Execution first ➤ Pathway second ➤ Support follows
Our foundational model is built on survival execution, not advocacy.
We execute what works now, today.
In doing so, we give patients, families, supporters, and communities a survival pathway to rally behind.
Our Vision: What We Execute
Earlier Understanding is the solution.
➤ It improves today’s patient survival now, not tomorrow.
➤ It helps families understand the cause earlier, so they do not become tomorrow’s newly diagnosed patients.
Today’s survival and tomorrow’s prevention are what we execute.
The Cure We Seek Is In The Cause
➤ Find the cause
➤ Accelerate the cure
➤ Improve today’s patient survival now
➤ Prevent families from becoming tomorrow’s patients
This is where a patient-led approach makes the critical difference
➤ We see where the system fails
➤ We turn lived experience into effective action
➤ We ensure support is targeted where it matters most
This exposes two gaps where Earlier Understanding works
- The gap between diagnosis and understanding how to respond, so today’s patients keep more options open and improve survival outcomes.
- The gap between cause and diagnosis, so families do not become tomorrow’s patients.
This is what targeted survival and prevention work looks like.
The Process
The process is our operating logic.
Think: a Ladder and a Bridge.
➤ Follow The Process
➤ Earlier Understanding
➤ Avoid Common Mistakes
➤ Keep Options Open
➤ Improve Survival
For today’s patient, diagnosis is the hole.
What is needed is a guide with a ladder to climb out.
For tomorrow’s patient, cause is where the bridge must be built.
That bridge helps families avoid falling into the same hole.
Both the ladder and the bridge are built from Earlier Understanding.
The Hero in the Hole Story
The hero is the patient.
The hole is the diagnosis.
The guide is the caregiver, family, clinician, and foundation.
The ladder is the process.
The process helps the patient see the next step, avoid common mistakes, keep options open, and improve survival.
For tomorrow’s patient, the work moves upstream.
Cause becomes the warning sign.
Earlier Understanding becomes the bridge.
Prevention becomes the action.
“I lost my younger brother Graeme to cholangiocarcinoma. Two years later, I fell into the same hole when I received the same diagnosis. Steve Holmes”
This is why CFA builds both the ladder and the bridge.
Our Commitment to You
We help patients and their families create Earlier Understanding when decisions matter most.
For today’s patient, our commitment is to help close the gap between diagnosis and understanding, so patients can follow a clearer process, avoid common mistakes, keep options open, and improve survival.
For their families, our commitment is to help move understanding upstream, so cause is understood earlier and tomorrow’s diagnosis can be prevented.
