Anyone who meets me learns pretty quickly that I am a huge sports fan. So it was a privilege to share the stage with three NCAA Division I basketball coaches on Tuesday for our Coaches vs. Cancer rally, which takes place on Capitol Hill each year during ACS CAN's Leadership Summit and Lobby Day. Coaches vs. Cancer is a nationwide collaboration between the American Cancer Society and the National Association of Basketball Coaches that empowers coaches, their teams and communities to join the fight against cancer. Jamie Dixon from University of Pittsburgh, Matt Brown from University of Missouri-Kansas City and Matt Doherty from Southern Methodist University have all been touched by cancer, and they showed that they are passionate about bringing their fight against this disease to Washington, D.C. They joined me, ACS CAN CEO John Seffrin and hundreds of ACS CAN advocates at the rally in calling on Congress to provide robust cancer research funding.
One of their stories in particular stuck with me after the event. Coach Brown was joined on stage by his 12-year-old daughter, Ally, who is a thyroid cancer survivor. She was fortunate enough to receive treatment from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and is currently waiting to see if her surgeries have been successful. Coach Brown joined the Coaches vs. Cancer program in 2009, just six months before Ally was diagnosed with cancer. He credits the efforts of cancer advocates for allowing his daughter to get the care she needed.
This short clip from a local NBC station is a great wrap-up of Coach Brown's trip to D.C.:
Mariah Forster Olson, an ACS CAN Ambassador Constituent Team Lead (ACT Lead), traveled to Washington, D.C. this week to share her story as a childhood cancer survivor and to advocate on behalf of other patients and survivors during the 2019 Childhood Cancer Action Days.