Raising Awareness for Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer

Carly Stafford Dixon, a survivor of primary mediastinal b-cell lymphoma (a rare type of blood cancer) and a patient advocate, sat down for an interview with CURE to discuss the topic of adolescents and young adult (AYA) cancers.

In the interview, Stafford Dixon aided in raising awareness about AYA cancer. She shares that bringing awareness to this topic is essential because this age group is often overlooked in media portrayals and public understanding. She also went on to emphasize that greater awareness can help ensure individuals feel supported from diagnosis through survivorship. Increased recognition may also lead to improved access to resources.

Tune into more of our insights on the recent AYA Cancer Awareness Week here, where we sat down with Alison Silberman, CEO of Stupid Cancer — an organization which helps to empower those affected by AYA cancer — to discuss the topic.

Transcript:

I think it's important to raise awareness about AYA cancer because often, when cancer is portrayed in the media — whether it's movies, TV shows, or books — you often see it as a tragic young child getting it, or it's someone perhaps over the age of 50. I think this age group is really underrepresented in our understanding of whom cancer can affect, and that's everyone, no matter their age.

Just the raising awareness [part of things], I think it's important that everyone feels supported during their — I don't love to use the term "cancer journey" — but feels supported during the whole process, from diagnosis to treatment to hopefully survivorship. Ideally, if we can raise awareness about AYA cancer, then there could potentially be more resources available.

Although the Lymphoma Research Foundation [for example] has an abundance of excellent resources, with more awareness, folks could be directed to those great resources earlier and understand that they are not alone.

Transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

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