I am honored to be a Candidate this year in the 2020 Students of the Year program, a seven-week initiative in which select high school students from around the country participate in a fundraising competition to benefit The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I am proud to be a co-candidate with Ellie Huppe and Haley Smith.  We are leading a diverse team of students from five high schools in the Washington DC area. In competition with other teams, the candidate team that raises the most money at the end of the seven weeks is named Student of the Year. Our mission is not just to raise the most money but also to bring attention to blood cancers like leukemia, which are the most common form of cancer in children and teens.

Since the early 1960s, five-year survival rates for many blood cancer patients have doubled, tripled or even quadrupled. Many LLS supported therapies not only help blood cancer patients but are helping patients with other cancers and serious diseases. In fact, drugs first approved for blood cancers are now approved to treat patients with stomach cancers, skin cancers, and autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.

LLS funded 43 of the 49 FDA approved treatments for blood cancer patients since 2017.

• Since 2000, more than 40 percent of the new cancer therapies approved by the FDA started as blood cancer research.
• In 2019, LLS established The LLS Children’s Initiative, a comprehensive $50 million multi-year endeavor, to help children with cancer. The LLS mission includes:
  • More than doubling our investment in pediatric cancer research grants;
  • Expanding education and support services for children and their families;
  • Advocating for and driving policies to accelerate the development of new treatments and break down barriers to care;
  • And, launching LLS PedAL (Pediatric Acute Leukemia), a groundbreaking global precision medicine clinical trial in acute pediatric leukemia.

Please visit my fundraising webpage often and pass along the link to family, friends, neighbors, colleagues or anyone you think might want to donate!  I recognize I need lots of support to reach my fundraising goal of $7,500!

On behalf of blood cancer patients everywhere, I thank you for your support, and let's KNOCK OUT BLOOD CANCER!

For more information about LLS, please visit www.lls.org

Thank you! Anna