Why am I shaving my head, and why should you care?
A challenge among friends 25 years ago has become the largest volunteer movement to Conquer Kids’ Cancer. This year, I’m joining thousands of others to shave my head to raise money for childhood cancer research!
Did you know, 1 in 5 kids diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. will pass away from it? For those who go into remission, more than 96% have severe or life-threatening conditions by the time they are 50.
However, it's not all doom and gloom. I wanted to highlight that significant progress has been made. "Cancer" is not just 1 disease, just like the "flu" is not just 1 disease. There are multiple types. The most common form of childhood cancer, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, has seen drastically improved survival rates! 10 years after the diagnosis, the survival rate has improved from ~9% in 1969, to over 90% today. This is because of improvements to treatment that have been discovered using donations just like the donation I'm asking for today!!!
Your gift will be supporting the best research across the country, through the largest charity funder of childhood cancer research grants, the St. Baldrick’s Foundation. This will help advance the fight against multiple types of childhood cancer. Linked in this post, you can see the stories of two children, Charlie and Keira, who passed away from childhood cancers that we have not yet found a cure for.
Please consider donating in their honor, and thank you for helping advance the fight against childhood cancers for children and their families.
*Hunger SP, Mullighan CG. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia in children. New England Journal of Medicine. 2015;373(16):1541-1552. doi:10.1056/nejmra1400972
