“Whenever I would say to anyone that I have ovarian cancer, they would say, ‘Oh, that’s a tough one,’ ” Mrs. Goldfein remembered.

“As opposed to breast cancer, which is a horrific disease, but you get support, you get a shirt, you get a hat, you get a race, you get a walk,” she continued. “There’s a system in place, a strong sisterhood that has brought breast cancer to the forefront of our consciousness.”

Mrs. Goldfein felt that the same should be true for gynecologic cancers.

So in 2003, having completed treatment, she created Woman to Woman, a program at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, to support other gynecologic cancer patients. The goal was to try to lessen the isolation they often felt because of the disease, or to bolster the spirits of those who might otherwise face treatment alone and scared.

At the time, Mrs. Goldfein was on the auxiliary board of the hospital, where she had worked as the coordinator of the surgical family waiting room for 12 years. The board gave her money to get Woman to Woman off the ground. She also had the help of her oncologist, Dr. Peter Dottino, and two social workers, Arden Moulton and Rachel Justus.

Mrs. Goldfein and other volunteers and former cancer patients quickly began doing whatever they could to make these women’s circumstances more bearable. What began as a small support group in Manhattan nearly 14 years ago has, by 2016, expanded to 29 sites across the country, and is now managed by the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.