Helene Winn Education and Community Outreach Director:
“About twelve years ago, our founder read a white page paper that highlighted the fact that cancer survival rates in the 15-40-year-old age group hadn't improved in almost 40-years. Other age groups were seeing improvement in survival rates (i.e. pediatric cancer, older adults w/ cancer) but survival rates for that group were stagnant. There was a wide range of reasons why this seemed to be the case, but it really came down to late detection. Individuals in that group don't tend to go to the doctor as frequently and/or don't necessarily think "cancer" as a potential diagnosis, which tends to lead to later detection and, consequently, unimproved survival rates.
Our founder, after reading this, felt strongly that people needed to know about the impact early detection can make on both survival rates and treatment options and that there are things we can all do as individuals to give us a better chance of detecting things early if something does start to go wrong with our health and, as a result founded 15-40 Connection.
While the statistic about that age group was a motivating factor behind starting this organization, we now run programs for people of all ages and the health strategies we discuss are applicable whether you're in that 15-40 age group or not.”