By CAC2 Staffer Bethany Lieberman
At the moment a family hears “your child has cancer,” life changes, and their child’s world turns gold—the traditional color that represents childhood cancer. Ordinary days—filled with scraped knees, school plays, and the simple joy of a bedtime story—quickly shift, replaced by a frightening landscape of hospital corridors and medical jargon. Families face this journey with courage and every ounce of strength, patience, and love they can marshal.
Pediatric cancer is the leading cause of disease-related death for children between the ages of 1 and 14 with 1,600 children in the U.S. losing their lives to cancer each year. Fortunately, survival rates have increased from around 65% in the 1970s to over 84% today. While this victory is a result of our collective efforts and provides hope for the future, behind every statistic is a child’s story, a family’s hope, or a community’s heartache. We must see and support the struggles of the newly diagnosed, those currently in treatment, those in survivorship, and families grieving the children who died.
September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and we commit to bringing the challenges and needs of those navigating a pediatric cancer diagnosis to light – a golden glow.
While specific cancers have their own awareness ribbons, the color for all childhood cancers is gold. The gold ribbon you see in September is not just a symbol—it is a declaration that, like gold, every child’s life is valuable beyond measure. When we display a gold ribbon, we honor every child and family battling childhood cancer, and those who survived. We shine a light on their struggles and hopes. We remind the world that children facing and surviving cancer deserve all the resources, compassion, and support we can offer.
This is where the Coalition Against Childhood Cancer’s (CAC2) Childhood Cancer Hub (CCH) truly shines. We illuminate a path for families in need and connect them to available support throughout every stage of their cancer journey. It is not just a resource directory, but a golden beacon of hope— curated by experts to ensure that no family has to face their childhood cancer journey alone.
Help is Available from Diagnosis through Treatment
Imagine when a parent learns their child has cancer. Shock turns to practical, urgent panic. How will they afford treatment? The financial burden is overwhelming and compounded by emotional stress. This can force families to make impossible choices. The Hope Portal (HP) directory on the CCH connects families with organizations that provide support from diagnosis through treatment. Finding resources is straightforward: search options allow customization by type of support needed, location, and diagnosis.
The daily living expenses, lodging, and transportation to access treatment add to family worries. HP can help them find organizations like This Star Won’t Go Out, which offers financial aid to help cover non-medical costs, or Christopher’s Haven, which provides a supportive community of temporary apartments for families of children undergoing cancer treatment at nearby hospitals. They may also find a listing for Air Care Alliance or Hope Air, which provide free flights across the United States and Canada for children who must travel for medical care outside their communities. Imagine the relief felt by exhausted parents, knowing they have affordable access to a clean, safe, and free place to rest just minutes from their child’s bedside.
During chemotherapy, children may lose their hair, feel nauseous, or experience isolation. The CCH’s HP also offers resources for emotional support that extend beyond traditional therapy. For example, a child could participate in a program like Little Hearts of Hope or Bree’s Blessings, whose art projects help children express feelings they cannot articulate. A child in treatment might paint a monster in bright, chaotic colors as a way to express their inner fear. Alternatively, a family may find camps like Camp Sunshine, where patients, siblings, and families can temporarily escape their struggles and connect with others who understand. These resources allow families to focus on what matters most: treatment, creating family memories together, and preserving their child’s spirit and joy.
A Guide for Survivorship
When the final bell rings and a child completes their treatment, a new, complex journey begins and often comes with hidden scars—the late effects of treatment, fear of recurrence, or the challenges of reintegrating into school or work. The Better Together (BT) survivorship directory on the CCH guides the journey through this new landscape. Families can easily search by type of support provided, location, diagnosis, or who is seeking help.
Survivors carry the emotional toll of survivorship and may develop long-term side effects from their treatment. For children, teens, young adults, and their families, survivorship brings worrisome challenges. The Better Together directory includes resources for managing post-treatment health complications and connecting families to specialized clinics for long-term follow-up care. For example, the listings include the ASK Childhood Cancer Foundation and the Cancer Wellness Center, both of which offer support, including free access to psychologists, wellness programs, and assistance with returning to the classroom. Access to these resources is invaluable because they provide a sense of control after a time of feeling powerless.
In raising awareness for the CCH, we work together to ensure that no family walks this lonely path without a helping hand. We can connect families and caregivers to a community that understands their journey. Join us this September in a collective effort to bring golden light to the challenges that follow a childhood cancer diagnosis and ensure that every child and family has the tools they need, not just to survive, but to face tomorrow with hope.
The easiest way to share the CCH’s HP and BT resources with the families you serve is as simple as a single cut and paste.
Please embed the Childhood Cancer Hub on your website or include it in your listing of available resources. It is a simple three-step process: Copy, Paste, and Save.
- Copy the Childhood Cancer Hub embed code above.
- Select the page you want to edit. Access your website content management system (ex., WordPress) and navigate to the page where you want to embed the CCH.
- Paste the code in your website editor, save it, and reload your website page to see the CCH successfully embedded.
Sharing best practices and coordinating action helps us better support families and survivors of childhood cancer. If you would like to be added to CAC2’s Childhood Cancer Hub, please contact us HERE.
