Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

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Katherine Lagomarsino blog image

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Aside from wearing a gold ribbon, there are myriad ways to get involved that range from sipping tea, noshing on gourmet grub or going for a stroll. Following is a roundup of just a handful of the many, many activities going on around the country this month that are bringing awareness to the disease. Atlanta Teddy Bear Tea at the St. Regis: The St. Regis Hotel in Atlanta is hosting a Teddy Bear Tea for adults and children every day from Sept. 1-Sept. 30. Five percent of afternoon tea sales will be donated to Cure Childhood Cancer.ChicagoCureSearch Walk for Children's Cancer: On September 6 at Soldier Field stadium, CureSearch holds a walk in honor of Chicago-area children who have been touched by cancer.Los AngelesL.A. Loves Alex's Lemonade: On September 20, the best chefs and mixologists in the country gather to offer tasty bites in honor of a good cause. Ticket sale proceeds go to Alex's Lemonade Stand, a nonprofit dedicated to raising money and awareness to defeat childhood cancer.PhiladelphiaFour Seasons Parkway Run & Walk: The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) hosts its largest fundraiser of the year with a 5K run and a 2K walk. The event supports the hospital's cancer research and survivorship programs.Washington D.C.CureFest for Childhood Cancer: On September 21, the National Mall will host CureFest, a fundraiser for childhood cancer that kicks off with a walk followed by a festival that includes live music, guest speakers and activities for people of all ages.

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For patients with cancer, the ongoing chemotherapy shortage may cause some anxiety as they wonder how they will receive their drugs. However, measuring drugs “down to the minutiae of the milligrams” helped patients receive the drugs they needed, said Alison Tray. Tray is an advanced oncology certified nurse practitioner and current vice president of ambulatory operations at Rutgers Cancer Institute in New Jersey. If patients are concerned about getting their cancer drugs, Tray noted that having “an open conversation” between patients and providers is key. “As a provider and a nurse myself, having that conversation, that reassurance and sharing the information is a two-way conversation,” she said. “So just knowing that we're taking care of you, we're going to make sure that you receive the care that you need is the key takeaway.” In June 2023, many patients were unable to receive certain chemotherapy drugs, such as carboplatin and cisplatin because of an ongoing shortage. By October 2023, experts saw an improvement, although the “ongoing crisis” remained. READ MORE: Patients With Lung Cancer Face Unmet Needs During Drug Shortages “We’re really proud of the work that we could do and achieve that through a critical drug shortage,” Tray said. “None of our patients missed a dose of chemotherapy and we were able to provide that for them.” Tray sat down with CURE® during the 49th Annual Oncology Nursing Society Annual Congress to discuss the ongoing chemo shortage and how patients and care teams approached these challenges. Transcript: Particularly at Hartford HealthCare, when we established this infrastructure, our goal was to make sure that every patient would get the treatment that they need and require, utilizing the data that we have from ASCO guidelines to ensure that we're getting the optimal high-quality standard of care in a timely fashion that we didn't have to delay therapies. So, we were able to do that by going down to the minutiae of the milligrams on hand, particularly when we had a lot of critical drug shortages. So it was really creating that process to really ensure that every patient would get the treatment that they needed. For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don’t forget to subscribe to CURE®’s newsletters here.
Yuliya P.L Linhares, MD, an expert on CLL
Yuliya P.L Linhares, MD, and Josie Montegaard, MSN, AGPCNP-BC, experts on CLL
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