A Recap of Our 2026 Midwest Conference

Maite Medina Ramirez on April 3, 2026

This past Friday, March 27th, we hosted our 13th annual Midwest Conference on Work & Cancer virtually. With 220 individual attendees, the day was full of connections, guidance, and support! Attendees included patients, survivors, caregivers, HR professionals, nonprofit and healthcare workers, along with managers, coworkers, advocates, friends and family members from around the country. Three sessions were presented, ‘Navigating Work After Diagnosis, ‘Job Hunting in 2026’ and ‘Job Search Tools: Using AI Strategically. The audience heard from two CAC staff members, longtime friend to CAC, career coach Julie Jansen, and knowledgeable human resource professional Adam Goldberg. Attendees received information and guidance effective job searching techniques, balancing treatment and work, making disclosure decisions, managing side-effects at work, using AI in a job-search, and much more!

While attendees are still in the process of submitting post-event evaluations, the feedback thus far has been positive with many respondents pointing to the approachability, inclusiveness, and comprehensive nature of the conference. One attendee stated:

“Love everything and each presenter offered fresh insight that can be realistically applied to my day-to-day work.” Or “The wealth of information provided. Each time I attend one of the CAC events, I learn so much. The materials were informative and cohesive.”

Though our Technology Assistance Program, we provided laptops to cancer patients and survivors who don’t have access to a reliable device and would be otherwise unable to attend the Conference. (If you are interested in being notified about future Technology Assistance Programs, click here.) To further our commitment to accessibility, we also provided real-time closed captioning throughout the day for all attendees. If you were unable to join us for the Conference, please check out the remaining webinars in our 2026 Balancing Work & Cancer Webinar Series, where you’ll find deep dives on many of the issues explored during the day. We also offer these sessions on our video archive to replay at your convenience. In addition registration is currently open for our virtual National Conference in June, as well as our virtual West Coast Conference in October. We hope you can join us! And of course, none of this would be possible without our generous sponsors, whose generous support ensures we are able to provide this conference free of charge!